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pumttn  KeKgiou^  i^tolJlemiS 

EDITED  BY 

AMBROSE   WHITE   VERNON 


SIN  AND 
ITS   FORGIVENESS 


BY 


WILLIAM   DeWITT  HYDE 

II 

PRESIDENT  OF  BOWDOIN   COLLEGE 


Forgive  us  our  sins ;  for  we  ourselves  also  forgive 
every  one  that  is  indebted  to  us. — Luke  xi,  4. 


BOSTON  AND   NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON   MIFFLIN   COMPANY 

1909 


ST"  7iS- 


COPYRIGHT,   1909,  BY  WILLIAM  DEWITT  HYDE 
ALL  RIGHTS   RESERVED 

Published  October  jgog 


OCA^ 


PREFACE 

In  his  inmost  heart  every  man  seeks  good 
and  loves  God.  But  God  is  great,  and  man 
is  small;  good  is  complex,  while  passion  is 
simple  and  insistent.  Hence  all  men  for- 
sake the  good,  and  disobey  God.  This,  in 
the  concept  form  of  philosophy,  is  the  truth 
contained  in  the  historical-pictorial  repre- 
sentation that  Adam  was  created  holy,  and 
subsequently  fell. 

External  quest  of  goods  less  than  the  best 
is  easily  forgivable :  internal  habits  of  hug- 
ging self  and  pushing  God  and  the  good 
away,  though  harder  to  eradicate,  are  still 
forgivable. 

Only  the  confirmed  perversity  that  hates 
and  despises  God's  goodness  when  brought 
near  in  winning  personal  terms  is  unforgiv- 
able. 

Punishment  is  the  defense  of  social  good 

V 

235438 


PREFACE 

against  the  perversity  of  the  individual,  and 
a  beneficent  revelation  to  him  of  the  evil  of 
his  selfishness. 

Forgiveness,  entirely  consistent  with  pun- 
ishment, is  the  welcoming  of  the  perverse 
person  back  to  the  God  from  whom  he 
strayed,  and  the  true  good  he  craves. 

Since  sin  hurts  sinner,  society,  and  God, 
he  who  forgives  must  share  the  suffering 
sin  brings;  and  therefore  forgiveness  must 
ever  take  the  form  of  sacrifice,  whose  crown- 
ing symbol  is  the  cross  of  Christ. 

To  be  complete  forgiveness  must  be  in- 
carnate; manifested  by  man  to  man.  On 
the  other  hand,  whoever  forgives  his  fel- 
low men  their  trespasses  can  have  for  the 
asking  the  divine  forgiveness  for  his  own 
shortcomings. 

The  power  to  bind  and  loose,  to  grant 

a  forgiveness  or  pass  a  condemnation  that 

is  ratified   in  heaven,  inheres   not  in  any 

special  order  or  office,  but  in  every  Chris- 

vi 


PREFACE 

tian  man  and  in  every  group  of  Christian 
men  who  have  the  spiritual  insight  for- 
giving love  imparts. 

Such  in  briefest  outline  is  the  doctrine 
of  this  little  book.  It  is  latent  in  Plato's 
dialogues,  and  in  the  pleadings  of  the  He- 
brew Prophets  with  wayward  Israel ;  is 
clearly  taught  in  Jesus'  parables,  and  is 
embodied  in  his  life.  It  is  taken  for  granted 
in  the  best  modern  literature,  and  shines 
in  the  lives  of  Christian  men  and  women. 
Yet,  while  generally  accepted  in  fragmen- 
tary form,  these  truths  have  never  been 
gathered  into  a  systematic  statement. 

The  fact  that,  in  this  year  of  our  Lord 
1909,  a  graduate  fresh  from  one  of  our  most 
famous  seminaries  could  present  as  the 
teaching  of  his  professors,  and  get  accepted 
as  satisfactory  by  a  metropolitan  presbytery, 
the  statement  that  "  Sin  is  that  which  God 
has  permitted  for  the  manifestation  of  his 
own  glory,"  is  sufficient  indication  of  the 
vii 


PREFACE 

need  of  a  coherent  doctrine  of  Sin  and  its 
Forgiveness;  true  to  the  insight  of  Jesus 
and  the  spiritual  seers,  and  faithful  to  the 
facts  of  Christian  experience. 

William  DeWitt  Hyde. 

BowDOiN  College,  Brunswick,  Maine, 
July  lo,  1909. 


CONTENTS 

I.   Introduction  i 
II.   External  Sins  :  Intemperance,  Li- 
centiousness, Stealing,  Murder  21 

III.  Internal  Sins  :  Pride,  Censorious- 

NEss,  Laziness,  Malice  45 

IV.  The  Cross  of  Christ  56 
V.   The  Unforgivable  Sin  6S 

VI.   Punishment  as  a  Favor  75 

VII.   The  Agent  of  Forgiveness  91 

VIII.   The  Power  to  Bind  and  Loose  98 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 


INTRODUCTION 

While  this  book  is  one  of  a  series,  of 
which  other  writers  will  contribute  the 
other  parts,  it  is  impossible  to  present  even 
this  small  section  without  a  brief  outline 
of  the  whole.  For  one  can  no  more  treat 
one  section  of  a  system  of  thought  with- 
out involving  others,  than  Shylock  could 
cut  his  pound  of  flesh  and  draw  no  drop  of 
blood. 

The  struggle  for  existence  through  which 
animal  and  man  have  been  evolved,  hard 
and  cruel  as  it  appears  to  the  onlooker,  is 
without  malice  or  intended  evil.  Each  in- 
dividual is  simply  intent  on  self-preserva- 
tion, oblivious  of  the  cost  to  others. 

Late  in  human  evolution  comes  law, 
I 


SiN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

which  sets  limits  to  competition;  and  out 
of  law  is  born  a  sense  of  obligation  to  count 
the  cost  of  selfish  good  in  social  terms,  and 
to  condemn  as  bad  those  forms  of  selfish 
good  which  cost  society  too  much. 

Law  is  a  negative  and  imperfect  witness 
to  an  order  of  human  society  in  which  the 
good  of  all  ought  to  be  the  object  of  the  will 
of  each.  Yet  to  the  individual  it  presents 
that  order  as  something  alien  and  hostile, 
enforced  by  penalties.  Obedience  to  such 
an  externally  conceived  law  is  slavish.  The 
doer  of  the  law  becomes  puffed  up  with  a 
Pharisaic  self-righteousness,  devoid  of  love; 
and  the  breaker  of  the  law  is  driven  into 
hopeless  rebellion,  alienation,  and  hard- 
heartedness. 

Next  comes  the  prophet,  who  tells  us  that 
the  law  is  not  alien  to  us  but  friendly,  that 
it  is  the  expression  of  the  will  of  the  Eter- 
nal Love,  seeking  our  common  good,  and 
that  we  are  capable  of  entering  into  that 

2 


INTRODUCTION 

love  which  law  imperfectly  expresses,  and 
finding  our  individual  good  in  serving  the 
common  good  of  all.  The  acceptance  of 
this  message  lifts  man  out  of  bondage  into 
freedom.  But  what  becomes  of  those  who 
do  not  accept  it? 

Finally,  Jesus  comes  with  a  gospel  even 
for  them.  He  tells  us  that  our  Heavenly 
Father  seeks  the  good  of  all  his  children 
impartially:  the  good  of  those  who  do  evil, 
as  well  as  the  good  of  those  who  do  good. 
To  be  sure,  so  long  as  they  do  evil,  the  best 
thing  for  them  is  reproof  and  punishment. 
Toward  those  who  persist  in  unrepented 
evil,  reproof  and  punishment,  therefore,  are 
the  form  love  takes.  But  they  are  inflicted 
in  kindness;  and  the  instant  the  sinner  re- 
pents of  his  sin,  the  necessity  for  further 
punishment  is  removed,  the  barrier  which 
kept  love  from  finding  expression  in  entire 
approval  is  broken  down,  and  love  then  goes 
forth  unchecked  and  unqualified.  This  go- 
3 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

ing  out  of  the  Father's  love,  through  the 
opening  made  by  penitence,  to  welcome 
the  child  to  a  love  which  was  always  there, 
even  during  the  period  of  sinfulness,  wait- 
ing only  for  the  breaking  down  of  the  bar- 
rier that  kept  it  out, —  this  is  forgiveness. 
Such  forgiveness  is  eternal  in  the  heart  of 
the  Father;  it  became  historic  in  the  per- 
son of  Jesus  Christ;  and  it  is  the  indispen- 
sable and  infallible  mark  of  the  presence  of 
the  spirit  of  Christ  in  the  hearts  of  his  fol- 
lowers. 

The  Christian  man,  then,  is  the  agent 
upon  earth,  and  in  human  society,  of  the 
Father's  universal  love-  In  him,  as  in  the 
Father,  and  in  Christ,  this  love  will  take 
whatever  form  the  condition  of  the  person 
who  is  its  object  makes  appropriate:  re- 
proof and  punishment  so  long  as  he  persists 
in  injuring  society,  and  wronging  his  fel- 
lows; full  and  free  forgiveness  the  instant 
he  repents.  Indeed,  these  two  expressions 

4 


INTRODUCTION 

may  exist  side  by  side:  punishment  by  civil 
penalties  and  social  condemnation,  so  long 
as  they  are  necessary  for  society's  protec- 
tion; and  personal  kindness  and  sympathy, 
even  while  the  penitent  offender  is  suffer- 
ing the  penalties  that  society's  adequate 
protection,  by  way  of  warning  to  others, 
may  require.  In  home  and  school  and  col- 
lege, in  society  and  business  and  the  state, 
these  two  outwardly  inconsistent,  but  in- 
wardly harmonious,  attitudes  toward  the 
penitent  offender  must  often  be  maintained 
together.  Otherwise  the  hard-hearted  on- 
looker would  confound  the  forgiveness  he 
cannot  understand  with  weak  indulgence 
and  moral  indifference;  which,  to  his  un- 
developed mind,  are  the  only  alternatives  to 
severe  and  merciless  punishment.  It  is  his 
inability  to  see  that  these  two  attitudes,  the 
external  enforcement  of  efficacious  penalty 
and  the  internal  sentiment  of  sympathetic 
forgiveness,  may  dwell  in  the  same  heart, 

5 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

and  express  themselves  in  the  same  life, 
which  makes  Tolstoy's  teaching  of  non-re- 
sistance to  evil  such  an  unpractical  distor- 
tion of  that  half  of  Jesus'  Gospel  which  he 
so  clearly  grasped.  Resistance  to  sin,  and 
to  the  sinner  so  long  as  he  clings  to  his  sin; 
resistance  to  his  sin  and  to  himself,  as  the 
representative  of  it  in  the  public  eye,  even 
after  he  has  repented,  so  long  as  practical 
public  policy  renders  such  resistance  expe- 
dient, may  exist  in  perfect  harmony  with 
that  entire  devotion  to  the  offender's  good, 
both  before  and  after  penitence,  which  is  the 
eternal  attitude  of  the  Father,  the  historic  at- 
titude of  Christ,  and  the  true  inner  attitude 
of  every  man  who  has  the  spirit  of  Christ 
and  of  the  Father  in  his  heart. 

If  this  is  the  mark  of  the  Christian  man, 
then  the  church  is  simply  the  community 
of  those  who  have  this  spirit.  To  serve  so- 
ciety; to  rebuke  the  sins  which  hurt  society 
and  our  fellow  men,  and,  through  hurting 
6 


INTRODUCTION 

them,  offend  God;  to  love  all  men,  even 
those  who  do  wrong;  to  live  the  better  life 
of  love  in  the  complex  relations  and  close 
contacts  of  practical  affairs;  to  keep  these 
spiritual  distinctions  clear,  and  the  impulse 
of  love  warm,  and  the  readiness  to  forgive, 
even  at  high  personal  cost,  alert,  —  these 
are  the  great  functions  for  which  the  church, 
the  community  of  those  who  have  the  lov- 
ing and  forgiving  spirit,  exists. 

The  Bible,  the  clergy,  the  sacraments, 
the  services  of  public  worship,  the  privi- 
lege of  private  prayer,  the  work  of  mis- 
sion and  settlement,  the  Sunday  school,  the 
brotherhood,  the  allied  societies  and  agen- 
cies, are  all  sacred,  holy,  divinely  ordained, 
just  in  so  far  as  they  promote,  purify,  ex- 
press, and  propagate  this  spirit  of  love :  love 
that  hates  and  punishes  the  sin  that  hurts 
men  and  mars  the  happiness  of  God's  fam- 
ily on  earth,  and  at  the  same  time  forgives, 
restores,  and  saves  every  offender  as  soon 

7 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

as  he  is  sorry  for  his  sin,  and  ready  to  re- 
nounce it  for  the  better  life  of  service  and 
good-will. 

Such,  in  briefest  outline.  Is  the  system  of 
theology  of  which  this  section  on  Sin  and 
its  Forgiveness  is  a  small  but  vital  part. 
Seen  in  this  its  setting,  sin  is  simply  lack 
of  love,  inflicting  cruel  wrong  on  suffering 
brothers  and  sisters  in  the  great  household 
of  God.  Punishment  is  a  coarse,  crude  de- 
vice for  society's  protection  and  the  offend- 
er's good,  which  love  is  compelled  to  in- 
flict as  long  as  the  offender  needs  it  for 
his  education,  or  society  needs  it  for  its 
protection,  or  onlookers  need  it  for  their 
warning.  Forgiveness  is  love  overflowing 
to  heal  the  wounds  inflicted  on  others,  and 
the  worse  injury  done  to  his  own  soul  by 
the  sinner's  cruel  selfishness;  welcoming 
the  sinner  into  the  favor  of  God,  the  fellow- 
ship of  Christ,  and  the  society  of  the  lov- 
ing, in  spite  of  the  offenses  which  he  has 
8 


INTRODUCTION 

committed.  Therefore  forgiveness  is  per- 
sonal, sacrificial,  and  requires  as  its  bearer 
a  human  heart,  living  close  enough  to  the 
offender  to  make  him  feel  the  shame  of  his 
sin  in  clear  contrast  to  the  righteousness 
that  is  there  by  his  side,  and  to  win  and 
welcome  him  to  the  life  of  love  and  service. 
It  is  a  layman's  task;  yet  one  in  which  the 
minister  may  both  point  and  lead  the  way, 
if  he  has  the  humble,  serviceable,  loving 
spirit,  which  is  the  spirit  of  Christ.  It  is 
hard,  costly,  sacrificial;  but  nothing  easier, 
cheaper,  less  personal,  vital,  social,  can 
carry  through  to  its  triumphant  conclusion 
Christ's  chosen  task,  —  the  salvation  of  men 
and  the  redemption  of  the  world. 

Without  clear  conviction  of  sin,  and 
habitual  exercise  of  forgiveness,  no  the- 
ology is  worth  the  words  in  which  it  is  ex- 
pressed. The  old  theology  had  both,  but  in 
an  abstract,  transcendental  fashion,  from 
which  all  reality  and  vitality  have  faded 

9 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

out  and  oozed  away.  The  new  theology  has 
not  yet  acquired  them;  and  until  it  does,  it 
will  remain  vague,  sentimental,  inchoate, 
inefficient:  a  halfway  station  on  the  road 
to  soulless  secularity.  No  man  who  is  not 
daily  aware  of  his  own  shortcomings,  and 
profoundly  penitent  for  the  unprofitableness 
of  his  service,  no  man  who  does  not  find 
occasion  for  constant  forgiveness  of  others 
every  day  of  his  life,  has  learned  so  much 
as  the  first  rudiments  of  Christ's  Gospel, 
and  all  theologies,  old  or  new,  will  remain 
to  him  sealed  books. 

Christianity  without  a  keen  sense  of  sin 
is  like  the  benevolent  old  lady  who  urged 
on  all  her  friends  a  favorite  remedy,  but 
could  never  recall  what  ailment  it  was 
warranted  to  cure.  Yet  a  keen  sense  of  sin 
comes  only  from  a  clear  vision  of  God. 
Folly  we  may  know  without  knowing  God : 
for  that  is  a  gouge  in  the  smooth  surface 
of  our  self-complacency.    Vice  we  may 

lO 


INTRODUCTION 

know  without  knowing  God;  for  that  is 
stamped  with  popular  disapproval.  Crime 
we  may  know  without  knowing  God;  for 
that  is  punished  by  law.  But  sin  we  cannot 
know  without  knowing  God;  for  sin  is 
missing  the  mark  of  God's  perfect  love. 

Folly  is  always  sin;  for  God's  love  in- 
cludes our  good.  Vice  is  almost  always  sin; 
for  God's  love  excludes  most  of  the  things 
public  opinion  disapproves.  Crime  is  usu- 
ally sin;  for  God's  love  forbids  most  acts 
which  society  condemns.  Yet  sin,  while  it 
includes  all  these,  is  more  than  they.  By  so 
much  as  "  the  love  of  God  is  broader  than 
the  measure  of  man's  mind,"  by  so  much 
as  it  is  deeper  than  popular  notions  of  good 
and  bad  form,  by  so  much  as  it  is  higher 
than  any  Jewish  or  Gentile  statute-book, 
by  so  much  does  sin  exceed  in  breadth 
and  depth  and  height,  our  vices  and  our 
crimes. 

Sin,  therefore,  is  not  a  rare  exception, 
II 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

confined  to  desperate  moments  of  depraved 
men  and  fallen  women.  Sin  is  the  almost 
constant  experience  of  us  all;  out  of  which 
occasionally  we  rise^  when  some  clear  duty, 
some  noble  impulse,  some  generous  affec- 
tion lifts  us  for  the  moment  into  oneness 
with  the  love  of  God.  To  measure  our  acts, 
our  thoughts,  our  desires, by  the  perfect  love 
of  God;  counting  good  only  what  coincides 
with  the  best  that  God  has  shown  us  of 
himself  in  Christ,  in  Christian  men  and 
women,  and  in  our  own  consciences;  count- 
ing all  that  falls  short  of  that,  sin,  —  this  is 
the  only  way  to  know  God  above  us,  sin 
within  us,  and  ourselves  the  battle-ground 
between  the  two. 

"  No,  when  the  fight  begins  within  himself, 
A  man 's  worth  something.  God  stoops  o'er  his  head, 
Satan  looks  up  between  his  feet,  —  both  tug  — 
He 's  left,  himself,  i'  the  middle ;  the  soul  awakes 
And  grows.  Prolong  that  battle  through  this  life  ! 
Never  leave  growing  till  the  life  to  come." 
12 


INTRODUCTION 

When  man  or  church  or  generation  loses 
the  sense  of  sin,  it  is  a  sure  sign  of  the  loss 
of  the  vision  of  God.  One  might  as  well 
talk  of  shadow  without  light,  divorce  with- 
out marriage,  treason  without  the  state,  as 
of  sin  without  God.  It  is  by  throwing  our 
lives  upon  the  background  of  God's  perfect 
love,  that  we  get  that  contrast  between  di- 
vine ideal  and  human  shortcoming  which  is 
the  sense  of  sin. 

Is,  then,  the  life  of  the  Christian  man,  the 
man  who  throws  his  actual  life  on  to  this 
ideal  background,  weighed  down  by  this 
perpetual  burden  of  guilt  and  condemna- 
tion? No.  That  is  only  one  of  two  elements 
of  Christian  experience.  The  other  is  for- 
giveness. 

The  same  love  of  God  which  condemns 
us  for  falling  short  of  its  high  standard,  the 
same  love  in  the  light  of  which  we  feel  our 
own  shortcoming,  and  condemn  ourselves, 
also  forgives,  and  restores  us  to  favor  and 
13 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

fellowship.  How  do  we  know  this?  What 
is  the  ground  of  our  assurance  ? 

Our  only  knowledge  of  the  love  of  God 
is  the  expression  of  it  we  see  in  Christy  in 
other  men,  and  in  our  inner  experience. 
Jesus  prayed,  "Father,  forgive  them,  for 
they  know  not  what  they  do."  All  Chris- 
tian men,  so  far  as  they  share  Christ's  spirit, 
forgive  those  who  do  them  wrong.  We  do 
it  ourselves.  In  so  far  as  we  have  the  spirit 
of  Christ,  we  never  wish  harm  or  evil  to 
another,  who  has  wronged  us,  or  has 
wronged  our  friends,  or  wronged  the  world. 
We  may  oppose  his  error,  and  rebuke  his 
sin.  We  may  punish  him  for  society's  pro- 
tection, and  his  own  good.  But  we  har- 
bor no  grudge  against  him.  We  welcome 
the  first  sign  of  repentance  to  assure  him  of 
our  continued  good-will.  We  try  to  bring 
others  to  forgive  him  and  befriend  him,  as 
soon  as  he  is  sorry  for  the  wrong  he  has 
done.  Even  before  he  has  repented,  even 


INTRODUCTION 

while  we  are  opposing  his  evil  deeds,  and 
suffering  the  wrong  he  does  to  us,  or  to 
those  dear  to  us,  we  pity  the  blindness  which 
makes  such  meanness  possible  for  him;  we 
are  watching  for  the  opportunity  to  welcome 
him  back  to  the  better  way.  This,  I  say, 
is  our  own  experience,  the  experience  of 
every  one  of  us  in  so  far  as  we  share  the  spirit 
of  Christ;  in  so  far,  that  is,  as  we  are  in  a 
position  to  understand  the  heart  and  will  of 
God.  For  it  is  only  through  his  revelation 
in  Christ  and  other  good  men,  reproduced 
as  a  genuine  experience  in  ourselves,  that 
we  can  know  how  God  thinks  and  wills 
and  feels  in  any  situation. 

Now  we  have  simply  to  turn  this  expe- 
rience in  upon  ourselves,  to  get  the  assur- 
ance of  the  forgiveness  of  God,  of  Christ, 
and  of  all  Christian  men  who  know  us,  for 
our  own  sins.  Neither  we,  nor  the  Chris- 
tian men  we  know,  nor  Christ,  nor  the  God 
whom   this    Christian  experience  reveals, 

15 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

would  hesitate  for  a  moment  to  forgive  and 
restore  to  favor  any  man  who  had  done  the 
mean  and  evil  things  we  have  done,  and  who 
was  sorry  for  them  as  we  are  sorry;  penitent 
as  we  are  penitent.  If  we,  so  far  as  we  share 
the  spirit  of  Christ,  which  is  the  spirit  of 
God, — if  we  would  forgive  another  in  pre- 
cisely our  state  of  confessed  and  repented 
sin,  then  we  have  proof  positive,  assurance 
absolute,  that  God, and  Christ,  and  all  Chris- 
tian men  so  far  as  they  know  the  facts,  for- 
give us  our  sins.  Christ  and  the  Father  are 
surely  not  harder  upon  us  than  we,  sharing 
their  spirit,  are  upon  those  who  do  us 
wrong,  or  work  evil  in  the  world.  We  are 
just  as  sure  of  God's  forgiveness  of  us  as 
we  are  of  the  presence  of  the  forgiving 
spirit  in  our  own  hearts  and  lives:  no  more, 
no  less. 

If  this  seems  a  strange  and  roundabout 
way  of  getting  at  the  assurance  of  divine 
forgiveness,  it  is  at  any  rate  Jesus'  way. 
i6 


INTRODUCTION 

That  is  the  ground  he  put  it  on.  "  If  ye  for- 
give men  their  trespasses,  your  Heavenly 
Father  will  also  forgive  you :  But  if  ye  for- 
give not  men  their  trespasses,  neither  will 
your  Heavenly  Father  forgive  your  tres- 
passes.'^ In  the  last  analysis  it  rests  entirely 
with  us  whether  or  not  we  shall  have  the 
assurance  of  forgiveness.  Whoever  has  the 
forgiving  spirit,  knows  that  God  forgives 
him  his  trespasses.  Whoever  has  not  the 
forgiving  spirit,  lacks  the  only  real  experi- 
ence on  which  he  could  base  belief  that  his 
own  sins  are  forgiven.  God,  like  Christ  and 
every  true  Christian  man,  stands  ever  ready 
to  forgive.  He  would  be  below  Christ,  be- 
low the  best  men  we  know,  below  our  own 
best  experience;  He  would  be  less  than 
perfect  love,  if  He  did  not.  God  is  as  good 
as  the  best  we  see  in  Christ  and  in  other 
men,  and  experience  in  ourselves.  Christ 
forgave  until  seventy  times  seven.  There- 
fore we  know  that  God  forgives  us. 

17 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

Having  made  this  appeal  to  Christian 
experience  as  the  ultimate  source  and  final 
authority  on  Sin  and  its  Forgiveness,  the 
reader  will  probably  ask  himself,  and  want 
to  ask  the  writer,  whether  this  sense  of 
omnipresent  sin  and  perpetual  forgiveness 
is  actually  present  as  a  clear  and  distinct 
element  in  the  consciousness  of  the  normal 
Christian  man  to-day.  Do  you  carry  Sin 
and  its  Forgiveness  as  conscious  experiences 
every  day  and  hour  of  your  life  ?  Or  have 
you  borrowed  some  traditional  phraseology 
from  the  Bible,  the  Fathers,  and  the  Prayer 
Book,  which  you  are  trying  to  palm  off 
on  the  modern  world  under  the  name  of 
facts  of  Christian  experience?  These  are 
fair  questions.  In  fact,  the  first  man  I  talked 
with  about  the  matter,  a  minister  of  the 
most  progressive  type  of  ^^New  Theology," 
put  them  to  me  with  the  implication  that 
the  answer  was  bound  to  be  "No"  to  the 
first  question,  and  "  Yes  "  to  the  second. 
i8 


INTRODUCTION 

The  answer  is  neither  an  unqualified 
"  Yes,"  nor  an  unqualified  "  No,"  but  some- 
thinor  between  the  two.  If  asked  whether 
these  elements  rise  to  explicit  consciousness 
in  their  naked  elemental  form,  we  should 
have  to  answer,  "  No."  We  are  not  expli- 
citly conscious  of  sinning  and  of  being  for- 
given every  day  and  hour  of  our  lives.  But 
then  we  are  not  explicitly  conscious  of  the 
presence  of  oxygen  and  hydrogen  every 
day  of  our  lives,  though  I  hope  we  can  say 
truly  that  we  never  rise  in  the  morning 
without  their  free  and  abundant  recognition 
and  application.  We  recognize  and  apply 
them,  however,  not  as  elements,  but  in  the 
familiar  combination  called  water. 

In  a  similar  way  the  two  experiences.  Sin 
and  its  Forgiveness,  become  combined  in 
the  experience  of  the  normal  Christian  man. 
He  is  always  aware  that  he  falls  far  short 
of  that  constant  kindliness,  that  sensitive 
sympathy,  that  strenuous  rectitude,  that 
19 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

disinterested  benevolence^  which  the  love 
of  God  would  have  his  life  express.  On  the 
other  hand,  he  is  equally  confident  that  this 
same  love  does  not  cast  him  off  or  con- 
demn him,  but  welcomes  him  to  continued 
fellowship  and  service.  Thus  Sin  and  its 
Forgiveness  unite  in  a  single  and  constant 
experience,  of  serene  humility  or  modest 
cheerfulness. 


II 

EXTERNAL    SINS 

Insight  into  sin,  as  missing  the  mark  of 
God's  love,  reveals  at  once  how  mean  and 
how  pardonable  it  is.  This  twofold  quality 
of  sin  we  may  indicate  by  the  single  word 
pitifulness.  In  so  far  as  we  take  God's  view 
of  sin,  we  loathe  the  act  and  love  the  man 
who  does  it.  To  be  sure  we  find  that  dis- 
tinction hard  to  maintain  in  practice.  God 
and  our  mothers  are  the  only  persons  who 
altogether  succeed.  But  the  difficulty  of  a 
spiritual  attitude  is  no  sign  that  it  is  not 
divine  and  right  and  true.  On  the  contrary, 
vengeance,  or  the  promiscuous  condemna- 
tion of  deed  and  man,  comes  so  easy  to  us 
that  we  suspect  God's  attitude,  man's  ideal, 
—  the  truth  of  the  matter,  in  other  words, — 
must  be  something  far  higher  and  harder. 

21 


SIN  AND  ITS   FORGIVENESS 

That  is  precisely  what  a  careful  analysis 
of  sin  shows.  Sin  is  always  the  sacrifice  of 
a  greater  good  for  the  sake  of  a  lesser  good. 
It  is  the  wanton  sacrifice  of  the  greater 
good  that  makes  it  mean.  It  is  the  little 
good  sought  and  gained  that  makes  it  for- 
givable. It  is  the  union  of  these  two  fac- 
tors in  every  act  of  sin  which  constitutes 
its  pitifulness. 

Intemperance  reveals  most  clearly  this 
pitiful  contrast  of  great  good  lost  and  petty 
good  pursued.  The  titillation  of  the  palate, 
the  jolly  comradeship,  the  momentary  ner- 
vous excitation,  the  temporary  inhibition 
of  unwelcome  considerations,  —  all  these 
are  good;  and  when  we  realize  how  good 
they  are,  and  how  the  abnormal  appetite, 
the  depleted  system,  the  weary  body,  the 
worried  mind,  the  lonely  heart,  craved  them, 
we  pity,  we  sympathize,  we  almost  half  ap- 
prove. 

But  when  we  call  to  mind  the  disease  of 

22 


EXTERNAL  SINS 

body,  the  hardening  of  heart,  the  weaken- 
ing of  will,  the  waste  of  money,  the  loss  of 
work,  the  wretchedness  of  wife  and  chil- 
dren, the  burden  to  the  public,  the  great 
avenues  of  love  and  service  perverted  and 
destroyed,  as  the  price  of  habitual  excess 
in  drink,  then  we  abhor  an  act  that,  how- 
ever many  petty  pleasures  it  may  show  to 
its  temporary  credit,  has  these  vast  and  last- 
ing evils  charged  upon  the  debit  side.  Then, 
if  we  are  Christian,  we  pity  the  man:  we 
long  to  put  our  lives  close  to  his;  to  share 
with  him  the  evils  he  has  brought  upon 
himself;  to  give  him  what  we  may  out  of 
our  unsquandered  stores  of  physical  goods; 
to  remove  from  him  the  sources  of  tempta- 
tion; to  fight  for  him  against  those  who 
profit  by  his  degradation :  in  a  word,  to  make 
his  sad  condition  ours,  with  all  its  disabili- 
ties; and  to  make  our  condition  his,  with 
all  its  resources  of  helpfulness  and  happi- 
ness. This  willing  acceptance  of  and  identi- 
23 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

fication  with  his  pitiful  condition;  this  strug- 
gle with  him,  and  against  his  enemies,  to 
lift  him  and  keep  him  up,  —  this  active  and 
suffering  love  is  forgiveness. 

It  is  the  opposite  and  yet  the  counterpart 
of  sin.  The  sinner  seeks  a  little  good,  at  cost 
of  widespread,  lasting  loss  to  self,  others, 
or  both.  He  who  forgives,  if  his  forgive- 
ness is  genuine,  deliberately  assumes  all  the 
sinner's  losses  as  his  own;  suffers  with  him 
and  for  him;  brings  the  enmity  of  his  ene- 
mies down  on  his  own  head;  and  thus,  by 
loss  freely  assumed,  secures  the  sinner's  re- 
covery and  restoration. 

This,  of  course,  implies  close  contact.  It 
is  hardly  to  be  accomplished  by  sitting  in 
a  pew  of  the  same  church  once  a  week, 
even  if  by  any  chance  the  drunkard  should 
happen  to  be  there.  It  is  not  accomplished 
by  voting  once  a  year  for  prohibition,  local, 
state,  or  federal.  It  is  the  sharing  of  life  and 
the  conditions  of  life;  it  is  the  giving  of  love 
24 


EXTERNAL   SINS 

and  the  labor  of  love.  Something  may  be 
done  through  contributions,  institutions, 
and  the  employment  of  other  workers;  and 
those  who  can  get  no  nearer,  may  well  give 
themselves  in  this  indirect,  substitutionary 
way.  But  ultimately  forgiveness  must  be 
brought  by  a  person  to  a  person,  through 
mutual  sympathy;  in  which  he  who  forgives 
takes  on  all  the  sinner's  disabilities,  and  he 
who  has  sinned  is  offered  all  the  resources, 
the  influence,  and  the  aid,  of  him  who  comes 
to  save. 

Licentiousness  likewise  is  pitiful  from 
this  same  double  aspect.  On  the  one  hand, 
it  is  the  expression  of  an  instinct  implanted 
in  the  race  as  the  condition  of  its  perpetua- 
tion, and  which  nature  never  permits,  for 
more  than  a  single  generation,  to  be  below 
its  normal  strength.  Any  lack  or  defect  of 
it,  nature  punishes  with  its  remorseless  pen- 
alty of   extinction.    Those  in  whom  it   is 

25 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

intense  are  nature's  favorites ;  and  with  in- 
tensity are  apt  to  go  a  host  of  attractive 
qualities:  physical  beauty,  genial  nature, 
generous  impulse,  the  dash  of  recklessness, 
the  charm  of  freedom  from  self-conscious- 
ness. All  of  us  who  have  been  brought  in 
contact  with  men  and  women  who  have 
sinned  in  this  direction,  if  we  are  honest, 
must  admit  that  we  have  seen  a  depth  of 
devotion,  a  warmth  of  affection,  a  heroism 
of  loyalty,  an  abandon  of  unselfishness,  in 
sinners  of  this  type,  which  we  too  often 
miss  among  the  prim  proprieties  of  pious 
respectability.  Sin  of  this  kind  is  in  a  sense 
natural ;  a  great  many  fall  into  it  through 
ignorance,  or  temporary  blindness;  many 
more  are  led  into  it  through  evil  example, 
or  economic  constraint.  It  is  pathetically 
pitiful;  and  if  the  individual  and  racial  his- 
tory could  be  known,  we  should  all  be  more 
ready  to  pity  than  to  blame. 

Yet  it  is  selfish,  cruel,  murderous.  For 
26 


EXTERNAL  SINS 

a  passing  gratification  of  passion  it  will  ruin 
a  whole  life's  happiness,  and  a  household's 
peace.  It  dooms  to  lifelong  degradation, 
disease,  wretchedness,  and  early  death,  a 
whole  class  of  wretched  women  in  every 
city  of  the  world.  It  spreads  loathsome 
disease,  bitter  jealousy,  blasting  hatred, 
through  innocent  hearts  and  otherwise 
happy  homes.  Nowhere  does  the  pursuit 
of  passing  pleasure  bring  such  a  wide- 
spread harvest  of  enduring  pain  and  shame. 

What,  then,  is  the  true  attitude  of  the 
Christian  man  toward  persons  guilty  of  this 
form  of  sin?  How  does  God  in  his  love 
regard  them? 

We  should  see  clearly  what  a  mean  and 
cruel  thing  it  is :  how  it  breaks  down,  for 
momentary  selfish  gratification,  the  sacred 
institution  of  the  family,  built  up  through 
centuries  of  struggle  and  self-control.  We 
should  abhor  it,  and  show  the  men  and  wo- 
men who  are  guilty  of  it  that  we  abhor  it. 
27 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

We  should  contrive  to  get  close  enough  to 
them,  personally  if  we  can,  institutionally 
through  our  support  and  gifts,  if  that  second 
best  is  all  our  circumstance  or  temperament 
permits,  to  make  them  feel  our  abhorrence 
of  the  mean  and  selfish  cruelty  of  it.  At  the 
same  time,  we  should  make  them  feel  that 
we  understand  the  weakness  that  led  them 
to  fall  into  it;  the  strength  of  passion  that 
dragged  them  down;  and  above  all  that  we 
stand  with  them,  and  will  toil  and  suffer  for 
them,  in  their  effort  to  rise  above  it,  and  live 
hereafter  the  clean,  kind  life.  We  should  be 
the  friend  of  the  corrupt  man  and  the  fallen 
woman ;  we  should  try  to  make  other  people 
their  friends.  We  should  go  down  and  share 
with  them  the  condemnation  society  passes 
upon  them;  and  we  should  lift  them  up 
to  share  whatever  respectability  and  social 
favor  we  enjoy.  Nothing  less  personal, 
nothing  less  vital;  nothing  less  costly,  no- 
thing less  apparently  impossible,  will  fill  the 
28 


EXTERNAL  SINS 

measure  of  the  love  God  would  pour  out 
through  our  lives  to  them.  On  no  other 
terms  can  we  claim  to  be  followers  and 
friends  of  Him  who  said, and  revealed  God's 
love  in  saying,  "  Neither  do  I  condemn 
thee;  go  and  sin  no  more." 

Lying,  too,  has  the  double  aspect  common 
to  all  sin.  In  its  meaner  forms  it  is  a  device 
for  shirking  responsibility,  escaping  criti- 
cism, defrauding  customer  or  creditor,  and 
springs  from  the  innocent  instinct  of  social 
self-preservation.  In  its  higher  forms,  as 
used  by  cultivated  people,  it  is  a  generous 
desire  to  be  more  entertaining  than  a  plain 
statement  of  the  case  will  warrant:  to  deck 
out  a  situation  in  colors  contributed  by  the 
narrator's  "happy  artistry."  Many  of  the 
most  charming  women  in  the  world,  some 
of  the  world's  most  famous  men,  especially 
those  of  the  military  and  sportsman  types, 
are  half-unconsciously  addicted  to  lying  as 
29 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

the  most  natural  way  of  making  themselves 
and  their  experiences  interesting. 

On  the  other  hand,  lying  of  all  kinds  tends 
to  break  down  confidence  between  man  and 
man 5  and  by  crying  "wolf"  when  there  is 
no  wolf,  to  invite  disaster  when  the  real 
wolf  appears.  The  liar  refuses  to  dwell  in 
the  same  world  of  mutual  understanding 
with  his  fellows;  he  shuts  them  out  of  his 
little  life,  and  in  so  doing  shuts  himself  out 
of  theirs.  People  learn  to  distrust  him,  and 
in  distrusting  him  to  distrust  human  nature. 
Lying  is  intellectual  highway  robbery; 
and  its  penalty  is  mental  solitary  confine- 
ment. 

How  shall  we  treat  the  liar  ?  What  would 
God's  love  have  us  do  to  him?  We  should 
live  close  enough  to  him  to  suffer  the  dis- 
appointments and  losses  that  result  from 
the  misinformation  he  gives  us;  we  should 
let  him  see  and  feel  that  we  detest  it;  and 
at  the  same  time,  we  should  show  him  that 

30 


EXTERNAL   SINS 

we  love  him;  that  we  love  truth;  and  that 
we  want  to  bring  him  and  the  truth  to- 
gether. Only  by  this  contagion  from  one 
who  loves  the  truth  and  loves  the  liar,  will 
truth  pass  effectively  and  victoriously  into 
the  liar's  heart,  and  make  him  over  into  a 
true  man.  Preachers  may  denounce  lying, 
and  professors  may  praise  truth;  but  it  is 
the  truthful  man  or  woman,  living  in  ab- 
horrence of  lies  side  by  side  with  the  liar, 
who  does  the  actual  work  of  forgiving 
and  saving  the  liar,  and  winning  him  to 
truth. 

Stealing  has  the  same  two  aspects  that 
are  the  common  marks  of  sin.  A  man  wants 
something  which  belongs  to  another.  He 
wants  it  very  badly.  He  is  poor,  and  the 
man  who  has  it  is  so  rich  that  he  would 
never  miss  it.  Or  the  chance  to  steal  is  so 
general  and  indirect  that  the  man  from 
whom  he  steals  will  not  even  know  that 

31 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

anything  has  been  taken  from  him.  This  is 
the  case  in  the  more  prevalent  forms  of 
stealing  to-day;  the  stealing  that  is  carried 
on  by  respectable  citizens  and  honored 
church  members  in  every  branch  of  indus- 
try, commerce,  and  politics.  I  want  to  sup- 
port my  family  a  little  better,  or  give  my 
son  a  more  expensive  education,  or  main- 
tain my  daughter  in  a  wealthy  social  circle. 
I  cannot  do  these  things  if  I  confine  myself 
to  producing  goods  or  rendering  services 
which  I  offer  to  the  world  at  their  current 
market  value.  But  I  can  do  these  things 
very  easily  if  I  organize  a  corporation  and 
take,  as  unfortunately  the  laws  of  certain 
states  allow  me  to  take,  a  large  block  of  the 
stock  for  comparatively  worthless  property 
or  insignificant  services.  I  can  do  these 
things  if,  as  director  of  a  railroad,  I  use 
my  power  as  the  representative  of  the  stock- 
holders and  the  trustee  of  the  public  to 
get  portions  of  the  road  built  by  a  con- 
32 


EXTERNAL  SINS 

struction  company  in  which  I  have  an  in- 
terest; and  then,  as  a  member  of  the  con- 
struction company,  sell  to  the  railroad  in 
which  I  am  a  director  the  constructed  road 
at  several  thousand  dollars  a  mile  more 
than  its  construction  cost.  I  can  do  these 
things  for  my  wife  and  children  if,  holding 
a  majority  of  stock  in  a  corporation,  I  sell 
it  to  parties  who  will  use  the  controlling  in- 
terest thus  acquired,  to  make  the  stock  of 
the  minority  stockholders  comparatively 
worthless.  I  can  do  these  things  if,  as 
owner  of  a  controlling  interest,  I  use  the 
power  it  gives  me  to  vote  exorbitant  salaries 
to  myself  and  my  friends,  or  to  withhold 
dividends  and  pile  up  a  surplus  until  the 
poorer  stockholders  are  compelled  to  sell 
for  less  than  it  would  be  worth  if  the  busi- 
ness were  fairly  managed. 

I  can  do  these  things  if  I  buy  things  which 
I  am  unable  to  pay  for;  if  I  use  my  politi- 
cal influence  and  position  to  secure  fran- 

2>2> 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

chises,  favors,  exemptions,  which  will  allow 
me  to  make  profit  out  of  the  public  loss. 
These  and  countless  similar  forms  of  steal- 
ing all  have  at  their  core  the  innocent  and 
laudable  desire  to  make  money,  gain  power, 
secure  position  for  myself,  my  family,  and 
my  friends.  All  that  is  praiseworthy.  The 
presence  of  this  ambition  is  an  indica- 
tion of  many  personal,  domestic,  and  social 
virtues.  We  cannot  withhold  a  certain  ad- 
miration and  aflfection  from  thieves  of  this 
type,  whom  we  meet  in  business,  in  society, 
at  the  club,  and  even  at  church. 

On  the  other  hand,  when  we  realize  how 
ruthlessly  they  strip  the  hard-working  man 
of  the  savings  of  a  lifetime;  how  they  im- 
poverish the  widow  and  orphan;  how  every 
honest  workingman  in  the  community  has 
to  work  harder  and  live  poorer  to  make  up 
for  his  share  of  the  general  loss  that  cor- 
responds to  their  dishonest  gains,  we  despise 
the   methods  by  which    these    men  have 

34 


EXTERNAL  SINS 

gained  their  wealth.  What  is  the  Christian 
attitude  toward  these  men?  How  does  God 
in  his  love  regard  them? 

We  ought  to  continue  to  be  their  friends. 
We  ought  to  get  and  keep  as  close  to  them 
as  we  can.  But  at  the  same  time  we  ought 
to  make  them  feel  by  our  example,  by  our 
expression,  whenever  a  clear  case  comes  to 
our  common  attention,  what  a  mean  and 
cruel  thing  this  polite  stealing  really  is. 
The  right  attitude  is  well  illustrated  by  the 
act  of  a  Wall  Street  friend  of  mine  who 
was  offered  a  price  considerably  above  the 
market  value  for  a  block  of  stock,  in  which 
he  was  the  largest  owner.  He  asked  the 
man  who  made  the  offer  what  he  wanted  it 
for,  and  what  he  proposed  to  do  for  the 
other  stockholders.  To  these  questions  the 
reply  was,  "Oh,  we  only  want  control.'' 
Straight  came  the  answer,  —  an  answer 
which,  coming  from  a  man  influential  in  a 
score  of  the  great  corporations  of  the  coun- 
35 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

try,  was  worth  ten  thousand  sermons  on 
abstract  honesty  from  the  pulpit  or  the  pro- 
fessor's chair, —  "You  can't  get  it  from  me. 
If  you  make  an  offer  to  all  the  stockholders 
at  the  price  you  named,  or  even  lower,  I 
might  sell,  and  I  might  advise  the  stock- 
holders to  sell;  but  I  won't  do  this.  So 
many  of  the  small  stockholders  are  in  this 
road  because  they  believe  in  me,  that  I  can- 
not make  any  private  deal  with  you.  My 
stock  is  for  sale,  but  my  stockholders  are 
not." 

To  go  into  business  and  there  become  a 
power,  and  then  to  use  that  power,  quietly, 
unostentatiously,  but  firmly  and  effectively, 
to  rebuke  the  very  men  with  whom  you  live 
on  friendly  terms,  and  thus  lift  their  stand- 
ards by  your  own  financial  loss,  —  that  is 
what  the  forgiveness  of  sins  means  in  a  mod- 
ern business  man.  That  is  first-hand  sal- 
vation. We  who  are  not  able  to  do  that,  as 
most  of  us  are  not,  can  find  a  second  best  form 

36 


EXTERNAL  SINS 

of  the  same  service,  in  supporting  churches 
and  schools,  journals  and  clubs,  writers  and 
speakers  who,  in  friendliness  and  fairness, 
yet  with  clearness  and  incisiveness,  pro- 
claim the  beauty  of  honesty  and  the  shame 
of  modern  stealing.  The  actual  condemna- 
tion of  sin,  and  forgiveness  of  the  sinner,  is 
primarily  a  layman's  affair:  for  in  such  a 
sin  as  modern  stealing,  he  is  the  only  person 
who  lives  close  enough  to  the  real  life  of 
the  thieves  to  make  them  at  the  same  time 
value  his  good  opinion,  and  wince  under  his 
rebuke.  In  this  fundamental  sin  of  modern 
business,  a  preacher  and  teacher  like  myself 
must  confess  that  he  is  at  one  remove  from 
reality,  and  is  merely  a  voice  crying  in  the 
distance.  Still,  those  of  us  who  are  outside 
of  actual  business,  by  our  clear-cut  distinc- 
tions, by  our  indignation  against  fraud,  by 
our  warm  admiration  of  business  honor, 
can  do  something  to  support  and  strengthen 
those  who  are   in   the  thick   of  the   fight. 

37 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

is  one  of  the 
the  modern  church. 


That  is  one  of  the  neglected  functions  of 


Murder  is  a  widely  prevalent  form  of 
sin  to-day.  In  saying  this,  I  do  not  refer  to 
the  rapidly  increasing  number  of  cases  of 
violence  and  bloodshed.  Alarming  as  that 
is,  it  is  but  an  insignificant  fraction  of  the 
total  murder  that  goes  on  in  our  modern 
Christian  civilization.  As  Professor  Ross 
has  pointed  out  in  his  "Sin  and  Society," 
the  modern  assassin  "  wears  immaculate 
linen,  carries  a  silk  hat  and  a  lighted  cigar, 
sins  with  a  calm  countenance  and  a  serene 
soul,  leagues  or  months  from  the  evil  he 
causes.  Upon  his  gentlemanly  presence  the 
eventual  blood  and  tears  do  not  intrude 
themselves.  This  is  why  good,  kindly  men 
let  the  wheels  of  commerce  and  of  industry 
redden  and  redden,  rather  than  pare  or  lose 
their  dividends.  This  is  why  our  railroads 
yearly  injure  one  employee  in  twenty-six, 

38 


EXTERNAL  SINS 

and  we  look  in  vain  for  that  promised  '  day 
of  the  Lord'  that  ^will  make  a  man  more 
precious  than  fine  gold.'  Our  iniquity  is 
wireless,  and  we  know  not  whose  withers 
are  wnmg  by  it.  The  purveyor  of  spurious 
life-preservers  need  not  be  a  Cain.  The 
owner  of  rotten  tenement  houses,  whose 
'  pull '  enables  him  to  ignore  the  orders  of 
the  health  department,  foredooms  babies,  it 
is  true,  but  for  all  that  he  is  no  Herod.  The 
mob  lynches  the  red-handed  slayer,  when 
it  ought  to  keep  a  gallows  Haman-high  for 
the  venal  mine-inspector,  the  seller  of  in- 
fected milk,  the  maintainer  of  a  fire-trap 
theatre." 

The  murderers  we  meet  in  every  walk 
of  life  to-day,  members  of  every  club  or 
church  we  ]oin,"present  in  evening  dress 
at  almost  every  dinner  or  party,  like  the 
thieves  previously  considered,  are  simply 
the  men  who  want  big  dividends  with  which 
to  maintain  their  families  in  luxury,  and  do 
39 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

not  inquire  too  curiously  how  many  human 
lives  they  needlessly  shorten  to  increase 
those  dividends,  or  how  many  human  heads 
they  cut  off  with  their  coupons. 

Recent  statistics  of  a  year's  accidents  to 
workingmen  in  Allegheny  County,  in  which 
Pittsburg  is  located,  published  in  the  "Na- 
tion," of  March  i8, 1909,  show  that  526  men 
were  killed  in  that  county  by  industrial  ac- 
cidents in  the  twelve  months  from  July  i, 
1906,  to  June  30,  1907.  In  addition  2000 
were  seriously  injured,  of  whom  500  were 
so  crippled  as  to  be  discharged  from  the 
hospitals  permanent  wrecks.  While  the 
speed  and  pressure  of  the  work  render  a 
large  number  of  these  accidents  unavoid- 
able, in  a  group  of  cases  investigated  35  per 
cent  were  attributable  to  the  employers' 
negligence;  in  other  words,  the  employers 
preferred  to  commit  that  amount  of  murder 
rather  than  pay  the  slight  cost  of  life-saving 
precautions  and  devices. 
40 


EXTERNAL  SINS 

In  Bangor,  Maine,  a  family  moved  into 
a  tenement  which  had  previously  been  oc- 
cupied by  a  patient  sick  with  tuberculosis. 
The  landlord  neither  informed  the  incoming 
tenant  of  the  fact,  nor  had  the  house  dis- 
infected. The  child  of  the  family  died  of 
tuberculosis  in  consequence.  When  asked 
why  he  did  not  have  the  house  disinfected, 
the  landlord  excused  himself  on  the  ground 
that  he  could  not  afford  the  ten  dollars, 
more  or  less,  which  it  would  cost.  Murder 
for  ten  dollars  is  a  depth  of  depravity  to 
which  most  bandits  would  scorn  to  con- 
descend. 

The  rookery  landlord  and  the  jerry- 
builder,  the  adulterator  and  the  maker  and 
vender  of  deleterious  patent  medicines,  the 
quack  doctor  and  charlatan  "  healer,"  the 
purveyor  of  polluted  water  and  infected 
milk,  the  man  who  fails  to  fence  dangerous 
machinery  and  provide  safety  couplers  for 
his  cars,  the  owners  of  unsanitary  tenements 

41 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

and  fire-trap  theatres,  the  men  who  over- 
work children,  and  employ  women  on  con- 
ditions fatal  to  either  health  or  character,  — 
these  murderers,  numbered  by  hundreds, 
and  whose  victims  are  counted  by  tens  of 
thousands,  are  the  ones  who  do  the  whole- 
sale human  slaughter  of  to-day.  There  are 
a  hundred  times  as  many  men  guilty  of  mur- 
der through  commercial  complicity  in  the 
United  States  to-day  as  there  were  five 
hundred  years  ago,  when  the  bow  and  arrow 
and  the  tomahawk  were  the  weapons  em- 
ployed. In  so  far  as  preventable  disease  and 
calamity  exist  in  our  communities,  we  all 
are  sharers  in  responsibility  for  the  murders 
their  permitted  continuance  entails. 

What  shall  we  do  about  it?  What  has 
God's  love  to  say?  We  must  call  it  by  its 
plain  hard  name  of  murder  every  chance 
we  get.  We  must  make  the  men  who  are 
guilty  feel  themselves  to  be  the  murder- 
ers they  are.  We  must  make  their  prac- 
42 


EXTERNAL  SINS 

tices  so  odious,  that  every  decent  man  will 
be  ashamed  to  have  a  hand  in  them. 

At  the  same  time,  we  must  have  charity 
for  them.  Their  motive  was  not  murder, 
but  dividends;  and  so  far  forth  they  are  no 
worse  than  the  rest  of  us.  By  kindness  to 
them,  by  close  association  with  them,  we 
must  get  near  enough  to  them  in  apprecia- 
tion of  their  good  qualities,  to  make  them 
feel  our  condemnation,  by  example  and 
by  word,  of  the  murderous  acts  they  often 
unwittingly  commit.  Vague,  general  con- 
demnation from  a  distance,  such  for  in- 
stance as  I  am  just  now  writing,  will  make 
little  or  no  impression  on  the  real  offend- 
ers. Few  of  them  read  religious  books,  or 
care  much  what  is  said  in  them.  More  of 
them  attend  church,  and  what  is  said  in 
the  pulpit  sometimes  makes  a  slight  im- 
pression on  them.  But  the  real  work  of 
making  them  feel  tlie  condemnation  of  the 
murder  they  commit,  must  be  done  by  busi- 

43 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

ness  men  who  live  and  work  with  them 
side  by  side;  whose  good  opinion  these 
murderers  care  for,  and  yet  whose  good 
opinion  they  cannot  have  so  long  as  they 
persist  in  murder.  There  is  an  important 
function  for  the  moral  and  religious  teacher 
to  perform  in  making  the  issue  clear,  and 
directing  public  attention;  just  as  there  is 
an  important  work  for  the  general  in  battle 
who  stands  back  of  the  firing  line.  But  no- 
thing short  of  close  personal  contact,  where 
ideals  meet,  and  practices  clash;  where  the 
savior  and  the  destroyer  of  life  live  together 
on  the  same  street,  in  the  same  offices,  in 
the  same  line  of  business,  side  by  side,  day 
after  day,  —  nothing  short  of  this  can  at 
once  condemn  the  sin,  forgive  the  sinner, 
protect  the  victims,  and  save  society. 


Ill 

INTERNAL    SINS 

The  sins  thus  far  considered,  though  like 
all  sins  rooted  in  the  heart,  have  their  im- 
mediate occasion  and  expression  in  exter- 
nal relations.  They  are  raging  conflagra- 
tions, wasting  and  consuming  vast  areas  of 
human  welfare.  In  addition  to  these  obvious 
external  sins  there  is  a  large  group  of  in- 
ternal sins:  sins  which  smoulder  and  run  in 
the  dry,  dead  leaves,  in  the  hard  and  hol- 
low heart  Ultimately  they  break  out  in 
most  unexpected  places,  and  do  widespread 
damage;  but  for  a  long  time  they  lie  con- 
cealed, unsuspected  even  by  the  very  soul 
in  whose  secret  recesses  they  lurk. 

The  worst  of  these  smouldering  sins  is 
pride.  It  is  the  perversion  of  the  whole- 
some instinct  of  self-respect.  Often  pride 

45 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

is  at  the  outset  an  assumed  mask  to  hide 
sensitiveness  and  shyness:  a  rough  husk 
developed  to  protect  the  delicate  life  within 
from  too  close  contact  with  alien  or  hostile 
spirits.  Its  aim  originally  is  the  innocent 
one  of  shielding  self;  not  the  cruel  one  of 
wounding  others.  If  we  could  trace  back 
to  its  psychological  genesis  the  pride  in  the 
haughty  man  or  the  heartless  woman,  we 
should  find  that  it  sprang  from  nothing 
worse  than  this  childish  impulse  to  shield 
one's  self;  and  that  only  gradually  had  this 
impulse  of  self- shielding  grown  into  its 
odious  and  hideous  counterpart  of  ignoring, 
slighting,  and  hurting  others. 

When  full-blown,  however,  pride  is  one 
of  the  most  deadly  sins.  It  is  the  very  an- 
tithesis of  that  love  which  is  God's  will  for 
us,  and  our  own  true  good.  Love  looks 
kindly  and  sympathetically  on  all:  sees 
others  and  ourselves  in  true  proportions 
and  relations;   recognizes  how  small  and 

46 


INTERNAL  SINS 

imperfect  a  part  of  the  whole  the  individ- 
ual, even  at  his  best,  must  be ;  and  gladly 
confesses  that  there  is  none  good  but  one, 
that  is,  God.  Pride  on  the  contrary  is  puffed 
up;  behaves  itself  unseemly,  is  easily  pro- 
voked, thinketh  all  manner  of  evil,  rejoiceth 
in  other  people's  iniquity.  The  proud  man 
will  hurt  another's  feelings  to  save  his  own. 
The  proud  woman  will  make  a  score  of 
people  miserable  to  give  herself  by  contrast 
the  semblance  of  happiness.  It  is  the  denial, 
the  drying  up  within  one,  of  the  very  prin- 
ciple of  love.  In  his  cruel  cutting  of  others 
off  from  himself,  the  proud  man  cuts  him- 
self off  from  God. 

Then,  too,  pride  is  real  or  pretended  satis- 
faction with  what  one  has  attained  and  now 
is;  while  life,  and  growth  which  is  the  law 
of  life,  depend  on  fixing  the  attention  and 
aspiration,  not  on  what  we  have  done  and 
are,  but  on  what  we  aim  and  strive  to  be. 
Pride  is  as  lifeless  as  it  is  loveless. 

47 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

How,  then,  does  God  regard  this  sin  ?  and 
how  should  the  Christian  treat  a  man  or 
woman  who  is  guilty  of  it?  Instinctively 
we  react  against  it,  with  a  corresponding 
pride  and  contempt  of  our  own.  But  that 
is  not  Christian;  that  is  not  Godlike;  that 
is  to  surrender  to  it,  and  be  overcome  by 
it.  Furthermore,  to  meet  the  proud  man 
with  a  pride  of  our  own,  only  drives  him 
further  into  himself,  making  him  more  hard 
and  hollow  than  ever.  Not  thus  can  this 
deep  root  of  bitterness  be  extracted. 

Unpleasant  as  the  proud  man's  company 
is  to  one  who  has  the  spirit  of  humility;  in- 
tolerable as  the  proud  woman  is  to  one  who 
meets  her  with  the  self-forgetful  modesty 
of  love;  still,  the  Christian  man  must  bear 
with  them  patiently,  and  live  with  them  on 
such  terms  of  intimate  friendliness  as  will 
make  them  feel  their  pride  silently  con- 
demned by  one  whose  good  opinion  they 
value,  and  will  bring  home  to  them  in  win- 

48 


INTERNAL  SINS 

some  personal  form  the  superiority  of  sim- 
ple modesty  and  all-inclusive  kindliness. 
This  is  the  high  price  of  salvation  from  this 
most  odious  and  anti-social  sin. 

Censoriousness  is  a  perversion  of  the 
healthy  impulse  to  pass  judgment  on  moral 
issues.  Human  conduct  is  the  most  in- 
tensely interesting  topic  of  thought  and 
conversation  in  the  world.  Nevertheless, 
censoriousness  is  a  mean  delight  in  putting 
and  keeping  other  persons  down  in  our 
estimation;  and  is  closely  akin  to  pride, 
which  is  a  base  delight  in  keeping  ourselves 
in  our  own  estimation  exalted  and  puffed 
up.  Censoriousness  seizes  on  every  fault 
and  foible  in  another,  magnifies  it,  dwells 
upon  it,  broods  over  it,  until  the  whole 
heart  becomes  a  festering  mass,  a  running 
sore  of  venom  and  ill-will.  It  is  the  poison- 
ous atmosphere  out  of  which  scandal  is 
brought  forth. 

49 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

Nothing  is  more  contrary  to  the  sweet 
spirit  of  Christian  charity  than  this  sour 
and  belittling  sin  of  censoriousness.  We 
feel  the  poisonous  stench  of  it  as  soon  as 
we  come  into  its  fetid  atmosphere.  We 
long  to  get  out,  into  the  fresh  air  of  kindli- 
ness and  sympathy.  We  are  tempted  in  our 
own  hearts  to  berate  and  denounce  the  lit- 
tleness of  soul  which  we  so  despise. 

That,  however,  would  be  falling  into 
censoriousness  ourselves.  That  would  be 
doing  in  ourselves  the  very  thing  we  con- 
demn in  others.  So  subtly  contagious  are 
these  internal  forms  of  sin,  that,  unless  we 
are  very  alert  to  apply  the  great  spiritual 
disinfectant  of  charity,  we  catch  them  be- 
fore we  know  it!  No.  That  is  not  Christian; 
that  is  not  the  way  to  overcome  the  sin, 
and  win  the  sinner  back  to  a  sweet  chari- 
tableness. 

If  we  would  forgive  him,  and  save  him, 
we  must  listen  to  his  wretched  querulous- 
50 


INTERNAL  SINS 

nesSj  hear  him  run  down  persons  bigger 
and  better  than  himself,  all  the  while  watch- 
ing our  opportunity  to  throw  in  a  word  of 
appreciation  or  praise  or  extenuation  for 
the  poor  victim  of  his  censoriousness.  Only 
by  bringing  a  deeper,  broader  charity, 
which  includes  both  him  and  the  persons 
whom  he  censures,  can  we  draw  him  out 
of  his  censoriousness  into  its  glorious  op- 
posite. So  costly  is  the  price  of  forgiveness 
and  regeneration  for  this  most  miserable 
sin!  How  few  of  us  there  are  who  are  will- 
ing to  go  on  paying  this  price,  day  after  day, 
week  after  week,  until  slowly  and  surely 
the  soul-poison  is  extracted,  and  the  vic- 
tory is  won! 

Laziness  is  a  sin  which  has  its  roots  in 
a  wholesome  and  natural  self-protection. 
In  these  days  of  overstrain,  when  so  many 
men  and  women  are  recklessly  consuming 
the  physical  capital  they  ought  to  hold  as 
SI 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

a  sacred  trust  for  the  benefit  of  future  gen- 
erations,  the  lazy  man  and  woman,  who 
live  on  their  interest,  and  a  low  rate  of 
interest  at  that,  may  be  serving  God  and 
humanity  more  wisely,  if  not  more  meri- 
toriously, than  their  more  strenuous  and 
straining  neighbors. 

Yet  laziness,  in  spite  of  this  far-fetched 
biological  justification,  when  it  involves  the 
preference  of  privation  for  others,  for  our 
family,  or  even  for  ourselves,  rather  than 
the  pain  of  effort,  becomes  a  clear  case  of 
that  loveless  selfishness  which  is  the  com- 
mon mark  of  sin.  To  let  somebody  go  hun- 
gry, or  ill-clothed,  or  uneducated,  that  I 
may  take  my  luxurious  ease,  is  to  put  the 
infinitesimal  and  trivial  above  the  infinite 
and  the  essential.  It  is  to  put  self  before 
God. 

No  words  are  necessary  to  add  to  our 
instinctive  contempt  for  the  man  who  pre- 
fers to  loaf  rather  than  to  provide  for  his 
52 


INTERNAL  SINS 

family;  or  the  woman  who  is  willing  her 
husband  should  become  a  drudge  at  his 
business,  in  order  that  she  may  live  a  life 
of  ostentatious  indolence.  Yet  reproaches 
alone  are  not  sufficient  to  rouse  the  lazy 
from  their  lethargy.  We  must  bring  our 
earnest  lives  into  close  contact  with  their 
frivolous  and  indolent  ones;  showing  them 
at  the  same  time  that  we  care  for  them, 
and  care  for  better  things  than  they  have 
learned  to  care  for.  To  lift  into  earnestness 
a  life  that  has  never  known  anything  bet- 
ter worth  while  than  bridge-playing  and 
automobiling,  under-exercising  and  over- 
feeding, we  must  bring  home  to  it  forms 
of  service  which  we  thoroughly  enjoy,  and 
offer  in  friendliness  to  share  with  the  soul 
that  is  empty  and  idle.  That,  however,  we 
shall  find  hard.  It  is  easier  far  to  do  a 
piece  of  work  alone  than  to  bother  with 
the  help  of  a  lazy  person.  But  we  must 
do  this   harder  thing;  otherwise  the  con- 

53 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

tagion  of  laziness  has  captured  and  con- 
quered us. 

Malice  is  the  extreme  antithesis  of  love, 
the  farthest  remove  from  God  to  which  a 
soul  can  go  short  of  the  unforgivable  sin. 
Malice  takes  a  fiendish  delight  in  bullying 
the  weak,  torturing  the  helpless,  and  inflict- 
ing pain  on  all  whom  it  dares  to  hurt.  In 
the  family  it  crops  out  as  the  brutality  of  a 
husband  to  an  intimidated  wife,  or  a  shrew's 
nagging  of  a  long-suffering  husband.  In 
business  it  appears  as  a  cut-throat  compe- 
tition, not  for  the  sake  of  extra  profits,  but 
for  the  devilish  satisfaction  of  crushing 
competitors,  and  driving  the  defenseless 
to  the  wall. 

Yet  if  we  could  know  the  inner  history 
of  the  malicious  man;  if  we  could  trace  his 
origin  back  through  the  abuse  received  in 
childhood,  when  in  self-defense  he  acquired 
the  attitude  of  antagonism;   back    to   the 

54 


INTERNAL  SINS 

struggle  for  existence  of  our  animal  ances- 
tors in  the  primeval  jungle,  we  perhaps 
should  pity  the  man  who  is  malicious  even 
more  than  we  pity  the  victims  who  suffer 
from  it. 

Of  course  our  instinctive  reaction  is  one 
of  intense  hostility:  the  desire  to  smite  the 
man  who  is  wantonly  striking  others.  But 
that  would  be  simply  catching  from  him 
the  contagion  of  his  own  malice,  and  pay- 
ing him  back  in  his  own  coin.  There  is  no- 
thing Christian  about  that.  The  Christian, 
who  comes  to  the  malicious  person  in  the 
love  of  God,  will  be  kind  to  him,  show  him 
that  he  has  sympathy  for  his  victims,  show 
him  that  he  desires  to  be  a  true  friend  to 
him,  yet  cannot  be  the  perfect  friend  he 
would  be  so  long  as  the  malicious  person 
harbors  in  his  breast  and  acts  out  in  his  life 
this  odious  trait  which  his  would-be  friend 
abhors.  That  is  forgiveness ;  and,  if  anything 
can,  will  purge  the  man's  heart  of  its  malice. 


IV 

THE    CROSS    OF    CHRIST 

A  SOUND  theology  is  simply  the  facts  of 
our  personal  life,  as  Plato  would  say,  "  writ 
large."  We  know  God  only  through  man. 
A  revelation  that  is  not  an  incarnation  is  no 
revelation  at  all,  but  blank  mystery  and 
magic.  An  attribute  or  act  of  God  that  can- 
not be  translated  into  appreciable  human 
terms  can  have  no  meaning  for  us.  Hence, 
as  human  experience  develops,  the  divine 
attributes  have  to  be  retranslated  into  terms 
of  the  deepening  experience  of  the  race. 
Startling  as  this  sounds,  the  only  alternative 
is  to  have  a  God  who  is  symbolized  by  the 
outgrown  experience  of  a  bygone  stage  of 
human  evolution.  And  this  is  perilously 
near  to  having  no  God  at  all;  for  the  God 
of  a  transcended  stage  of  human  history  is 
hardly  worshipful. 

56 


THE  CROSS  OF  CHRIST 

There  have  been  times  when  arbitrary 
punishment  for  wrong-doing  was  a  familiar 
spectacle  in  courts  of  law;  when  personal 
intercession  was  a  potent  factor  in  securing 
remission  of  such  penalty;  when  fear  and 
favor  alternated  on  the  throne  of  human 
government.  In  Oriental  communities  this 
stage  persists,  and  recent  events  in  France 
indicate  that  this  stage  of  the  development 
of  "  justice "  is  not  altogether  transcended 
there. 

Wherever  Anglo-Saxon  law  and  institu- 
tions have  spread,  however,  right  is  no 
longer  justified  by  might,  or  swayed  by 
favor;  it  must  justify  itself  by  the  good  it 
serves;  and  to  remit  essential  penalty  by 
special  favor  is  seen  to  be  a  grievous  wrong. 
Consequently,  the  interpretation  of  the  di- 
vine government  in  these  arbitrary  and 
capricious  terms  no  longer  appeals  to  the 
Anglo-Saxon  and  German  conscience.  Tor- 
ments of  hell  make  men  rebel  against  what 

57 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

in  a  civil  government  they  would  brand  as 
tyranny;  and  offers  of  forgiveness  on  too 
easy  terms  make  them  suspicious  of  a  dis- 
cipline which,  if  it  existed  in  their  own 
communities,  they  would  despise  as  senti- 
mental. Hence,  while  the  sinner  may  admit 
that  he  is  a  fool  and  a  knave,  and  confess 
that  he  ought  to  rule  his  greed  and  thirst, 
yet  when  th^  only  agencies  brought  to  bear 
on  him  are  the  threats  of  punishment  and 
the  promises  of  pardon,  he  is  likely  to  obey 
his  own  sweet  will,  in  defiance  alike  of  the 
warnings  and  of  the  consolations  of  religion. 
The  religion  of  fear  and  favor,  based  on  the 
Oriental  and  mediaeval  heaven  and  hell,  has 
lost  its  moral  grip  on  the  Anglo-Saxon  sin- 
ner of  to-day. 

There  is  one  hold  on  such  a  sinner,  one 
only.  He  is  not  blind;  he  is  not  all  unkind. 
Through  the  carnal  crust  he  sometimes  sees 
the  man  he  ought  to  be.  Especially  when 
his  greed  has  plundered  the  poor;  when  his 

58 


THE  CROSS  OF  CHRIST 

lust  has  ruined  the  innocent;  when  his  dis- 
sipation, his  profligacy,  has  grieved  those 
who  love  him  and  have  made  great  sacri- 
fices on  his  behalf,  and  brought  down  their 
gray  hairs  in  sorrow  to  the  grave,  —  then  he 
is  truly  sorry;  then  he  repents;  then  he  re- 
solves to  be  a  better  man.  Perhaps  of  all 
men  in  the  modern  world,  the  college  offi- 
cer comes  closest  to  the  real  motives  which 
sway  the  hearts  of  men  who  have  done 
wrong.  Doctor  Eliot  declares  that  his  expe- 
rience at  Harvard  has  taught  him  that  the 
only  way  to  save  a  bad  young  man  is  to 
bring  to  bear  on  him  the  influence  of  some 
one  whom  he  loves,  and  make  him  face  his 
evil  deeds  in  terms  of  what  they  mean  in 
sorrow  to  the  loved  one.  We  all  know  that 
if  we  cannot  find  some  person  for  whom 
such  a  young  man  cares,  and  for  whose 
sake  he  is  willing  to  try  to  do  better,  neither 
threats  nor  entreaties  are  ever  of  avail.  Con- 
sequence to  others,  —  yes,  to  others  who  are 
59 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

innocent,  and  whose  sorrow  is  the  free  sac- 
rifice of  love, — this  is  the  one  thing  that 
will  get  hold  of  a  bad  man's  heart  when  all 
else  fails. 

The  cross  of  Christ  is  the  symbol  of  the 
consequence  of  sin,  writ  large.  Where  there 
is  greed,  there  is  privation;  where  there  is 
corruption, there  is  oppression;  where  there 
is  lust,  there  is  anguish;  where  there  is 
drunkenness,  there  is  misery;  where  there 
is  falsehood,  there  is  distrust;  where  there 
is  cruelty,  there  is  suffering;  where  there  is 
pride, there  is  despair;  where  there  is  osten- 
tation, there  is  heartburning;  where  there 
is  unkindness,  there  are  tears;  in  a  word, 
where  there  is  sin,  there  is  punishment; 
though  the  bearers  of  the  heaviest  punish- 
ment are  more  frequently  the  innocent  vic- 
tims than  the  guilty  doers  of  the  wrong. 
Christ,  in  coming  into  a  world  full  of  hypo- 
crisy and  avarice  and  pride  and  malice, 
had  his  life  embittered,  and  finally  was 
60 


THE  CROSS  OF  CHRIST 

brought  to  death,  as  the  inevitable  conse- 
quence of  being  a  good  man  in  an  evil 
world.  He  loved  the  world,  and,  in  trying 
to  do  it  good,  won  its  hate.  In  seeking  to 
save  it  he  laid  down  his  life.  Hence  he 
stands  as  the  great  historic  representative 
of  suffering  love  seeking  to  save  the  world. 
He  is  to  all  who  have  sinned  and  gone 
astray  what  the  sorrowing  father  and  griev- 
ing mother  are  to  their  wayward  boy,  what 
the  true  friend  who  sticks  to  him  through 
thick  and  thin  is  to  the  fellow  who  has  fallen 
into  bad  habits  and  disgrace.  Christ  stands, 
therefore,  as  the  revealer  and  interpreter 
of  God  in  terms  of  the  highest  and  holiest 
human  experience  we  know — that  of  suf- 
fering love  bearing  the  consequences  of  sin, 
and  appealing  to  the  sinner  who  has  caused 
the  sorrow,  to  be  a  better  man. 

The  law  of  vicarious  sacrifice  is  written 
into  the  constitution  of  the  moral  universe. 
Society  is    organic.   If    one    does    wrong, 
6i 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

others  must  suffer.  For  wrong  is  maladjust- 
ment; and  the  symptom  of  maladjustment 
is  pain.  The  great  deinand  of  the  hour  is 
ethical  insight;  to  point  out  in  precise  terms 
the  meanness  and  cruelty  and  misery-pro- 
ducing power  of  specific  sins.  If  the  pro- 
moter of  dishonest  business  schemes  could 
see  the  privation  in  country  homes,  where 
the  hard  earnings  of  years  of  toil  are  swept 
away  by  the  floods  of  water  with  which  he 
has  diluted  the  stock  they  purchased  in  good 
faith;  if  the  licentious  man  could  see  the 
years  of  agony  and  degradation,  released 
at  last  by  squalid  and  ignominious  death, 
which  the  victims  of  his  passing  pleasure 
must  drag  out  in  consequence  of  what  he  and 
men  like  him  have  made  of  them;  if  the 
inconsiderate  husband,  the  merciless  em- 
ployer, the  glib  scandalmonger,  the  corrupt 
legislator,  the  reckless  speculator,  could  be 
made  to  see  just  what  their  conduct  means 
in  want  and  woe  and  lingering  pain  and 
62 


r 


THE  CROSS  OF  CHRIST 

premature  death  to  their  innocent  and  help- 
less victims,  they  would  speedily  repent 
and  mend  their  ways. 

The  problem  of  religion  is  to  present 
Christ  as  the  representative  of  all  humanity; 
so  to  hold  up  the  cross  of  Christ  as  to  make 
every  man  who  is  doing  wrong  feel  that  he 
is  rolling  up  the  mighty  mass  of  misery 
which  Christ  and  humanity  must  bear.  It 
must  show  that  every  deed  of  dishonesty 
or  lust,  every  word  of  unkindness  or  insin- 
cerity, every  indulgence  in  sensuality  or 
selfishness,  is  an  addition  to  the  burden 
Christ  came  to  bear;  a  crucifying  of  him 
afresh  in  the  person  of  his  brethren.  It  must 
point  out  the  countless  concrete  condi- 
tions, in  home  and  school,  in  business  and 
society,  in  politics  and  philanthropy,  in 
charity  and  reform,  in  which,  by  work  that 
scorns  to  shirk  because  unwatched,by  kind- 
liness that  expects  no  personal  return,  by 
truth  that  shrinks  not  from  inevitable  mis- 

63 


SIN  AND  ITS   FORGIVENESS 

interpretation,  by  fidelity  that  gets  no  ap- 
preciation, by  perseverance  that  receives 
no  encouragement,  by  courage  that  wins 
no  recognition,  by  endurance  that  attracts 
no  notice,  by  sacrifice  the  very  existence  of 
which  is  unsuspected,  by  suffering  that  re- 
mains a  sacred  secret  locked  forever  in  the 
silent  sufferer's  heart,  we  all  may  bear  our 
little  fraction  of  the  great  cross  of  Christ, 
which  is  the  naturally  selected,  divinely  ap- 
pointed method  of  the  salvation  of  the  world. 

The  old  doctrine  of  the  solidarity  of  man 
in  sin,  through  inheritance  from  Adam,  has 
lost  for  the  modern  mind  whatever  force  it 
ever  had.  If  that  were  the  only  alternative, 
individualism  of  the  Stoic  type,  both  in  sin 
and  salvation,  would  come  in  to  take  its 
place.  Salvation  in  and  through  Christ 
would  have  no  place  in  such  individualism. 

But,  as  Dr.  S.  M.  Crothers  has  recently 
pointed  out,  we  are  confronted  to-day  by  a 
new  solidarity  in  sin,  which  requires  a  so- 

64 


w 


THE  CROSS  OF  CHRIST 

cial  rather  than  an  individual  redemption. 
A  vast  mass  of  disease,  accident,  wrong, 
suffering,  which  we  used  to  cast  on  Provi- 
dence, we  now  have  learned,  through  phy- 
sical, medical,and  social  science,  to  be  pre- 
ventable. Typhoid  fever  and  tuberculosis, 
child-labor  and  the  sweat-shop,  certain  types 
of  poverty  and  crime,  are  absolutely  pre- 
ventable by  proper  sanitary,  social,  political, 
and  moral  measures.  In  so  far,  then,  as  these 
avoidable  evils  persist,  they  do  so  with  our 
common  consent;  and  for  them  we  are 
unitedly  responsible.  The  individual  alone 
does  not  produce  them,  but  we  all  are  jointly 
responsible  for  them.  The  individual  alone 
cannot  remove  them,  but  is  helpless  and  im- 
potent in  the  face  of  these  gigantic  evils,  re- 
sponsibility for  the  continued  existence  of 
which  he  shares.  His  only  escape  from  this 
mountainous  burden  of  social  sin  lies  in 
giving  himself,  mind  and  heart,  soul  and 
body,  time    and    strength,    influence    and 

65 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

money,  to  a  great  social  force  which  on 
a  scale  commensurate  with  these  evils  is 
working  for  their  removal. 

Now  that  great  social  force  is  Christ, 
and  the  spirit  of  Christ  in  the  hearts  of  his 
followers  and  in  the  life  and  work  of  the 
Christian  community.  In  his  name  the  great 
spiritual  forces  of  the  modern  world  are 
marshaled  against  evil.  In  his  spirit  the 
fight  against  these  evils  is  carried  on. 

Henceforth,  to  be  an  indifferent  indi- 
vidual is  impossible.  Each  man,  whether  he 
wills  it  or  not,  must  be  on  one  side  or  the 
other  of  these  vast  historic,  social  forces, 
greater  than  himself.  Each  one  of  us  must 
be  bearing  either  an  unrepented  and  there- 
fore unforgiven  share  of  responsibility  for 
the  avoidable  evils  under  which  the  world 
is  groaning  and  travailing  in  pain,  or  else 
a  generous  share  in  the  effort  to  conquer 
them  and  save  the  world  from  them,  of 
which  Christ  is  the  historic  leader,  and  his 
66 


THE  CROSS  OF  CHRIST 

cross  the  accepted  social  symbol.  Each  one 
of  us  must  be  either  a  betrayer  or  a  servant 
of  humanity,  a  crucifier  of  the  Lord,  or  else 
a  bearer  of  his  cross.  So  mighty  are  these 
two  opposed  social  forces,  that  each  indi- 
vidual is  bound  to  be  swept  along  by  the 
one  or  the  other.  Between  them  the  liberty 
of  indifference  is  impossible.  To  choose 
which  one  we  will  serve  is  our  only  liberty. 
Only  as  we  bear  the  cross  of  Christ  in  for- 
giving, serving,  saving  love  to  the  sinning, 
suffering  world,  can  we  escape  the  con- 
demnation of  being  guilty  partners  in  the 
sins  and  sorrows  under  which  it  suffers. 


V 

THE    UNFORGIVABLE    SIN 

Ordinary  sins,  such  as  we  have  been 
considering,  are  compounded  of  some  little 
selfish  good  for  the  sake  of  which  they  are 
committed,  and  great  personal  or  social 
evils  in  spite  of  which  they  are  committed. 
In  all  these  sins,  the  mind  is  more  or  less 
blind;  the  will  is  choosing  the  lesser  in 
preference  to  the  greater  good,  and  is  there- 
fore perverse;  but  the  heart  is  not  neces- 
sarily bent  on  evil  for  the  sake  of  evil;  it  is 
not  irreconcilably  arrayed  against  what  it 
knows  and  feels  to  be  good. 

Consequently,  when  a  friendly  person 
comes  close  to  the  sinner,  shows  him 
kindly  and  modestly  the  evil  of  his  way, 
and  that,  in  spite  of  the  evil  he  does,  he  is 
still  loved  for  the  man  that  he  is  capable  of 
68 


THE  UNFORGIVABLE  SIN 

being,  sinners  whose  sin  is  of  this  thought- 
less, naturally  selfish  type,  usually  welcome 
the  love  that  comes  to  them  in  expressed 
or  implied  reproof,  tempered  with  gentle- 
ness and  kindliness;  give  up  the  sins  that 
grieve  the  friend  who  loves  them;  and  for 
his  sake,  and  to  stand  well  with  him,  try  to 
make  their  own  the  conduct  and  character 
which  they  admire  in  their  friend,  and 
which  they  must  have  in  themselves  to 
please  him,  and  be  worthy  of  his  unquali- 
fied approval.  Ninety-nine  sinners  out  of  a 
hundred  will  abandon  any  sin  that  they  are 
clearly  and  intensely  made  to  feel  is  a 
source  of  grief  to  some  one  who  loves  them, 
and  whose  love  they  appreciate  and  desire 
to  retain.  So  potent  a  redeeming  and  regen- 
erating power  is  love,  brought  close  home 
to  the  heart  and  everyday  life  of  the  of- 
fender, by  one  whose  love  the  offender  ap- 
preciates and  is  eager  to  retain !  Most  men 
and  women  in  their  inmost  hearts  prize  such 

69 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

love,  kindliness,  good  opinion,  and  good- 
will, offered  by  persons  whom  they  respect 
and  admire,  as  the  supremely  precious  thing 
in  life.  For  the  sake  of  that,  they  will  give  up 
everything  else,  even  their  cherished  sins, 
their  favorite  vices,  their  habitual  short- 
comings. The  love  that  works  this  miracle, 
to  be  sure,  must  come  close;  it  must  be 
simple  and  genuine,  without  assumption  of 
superiority  or  airs;  it  must  be  backed  by  a 
character  that  commands  respect  and  admi- 
ration on  other  grounds  than  that  of  the  par- 
ticular moral  issue  at  stake. 

If  this  truth  were  the  whole  truth,  we 
could  take  a  very  rosy  and  optimistic  view 
of  the  speedy  regeneration  of  mankind,  and 
the  completed  redemption  of  the  world. 
Unfortunately,  comparatively  few  wrong- 
doers ever  have  a  forgiving,  redeeming, 
transforming  love,  of  the  intensity  and  inti- 
macy described  above,  brought  close  home 
to  them  in  human  terms.  The  harvest  of 
70 


THE  UNFORGIVABLE  SIN 

men  ready  to  be  transformed  by  the  touch 
of  such  a  love  is  plenteous;  but  labourers 
in  that  harvest,  persons  who  live  high  up 
with  God  and  his  ideals,  and  at  the  same 
time  sympathetically  and  intimately  with 
those  who  fall  short  of  them,  are  lament- 
ably few.  Not  one  wrong-doer  in  ten,  even 
in  a  nominally  Christian  land,  ever  feels 
the  strain  between  his  sin  and  a  loving 
heart  by  his  side  that  hates  it.  Hence  so 
few  are  drawn  away  from  the  sins  that  so 
easily  beset  them. 

The  difficulty  largest  in  size  is  our  lack 
of  redeemers.  But  the  difficulty  deepest  in 
nature  is  that  there  are  apparently  persons 
who  refuse  to  be  redeemed.  There  are  per- 
sons, apparently,  who  not  merely  sin  in  the 
ordinary  way,  by  preferring  their  own  petty 
satisfactions  to  larger  personal  and  social 
goods;  but  who,  when  the  nobler  life  of 
unselfishness  is  brought  close  home  to  them 
in  the  person  of  one  who  loves  them,  and 
71 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

offers  them  his  love^  who  sorrows  for  them 
and  suffers  with  them,  who  is  eager  to  share 
the  better  life  with  them,  and  who  com- 
mends the  better  Hfe,  by  the  brave,  patient, 
generous  way  he  lives  it,  —  there  apparently 
are  persons  who  despise  love  itself,  turn 
from  it,  trample  on  it,  pervert  the  charity 
it  offers  into  an  excuse  for  continued  wick- 
edness, impose  on  the  offered  sympathy, 
and  even  hate  the  one  who  offers  his  love, 
for  the  implied  or  expressed  rebuke  his  bet- 
ter life  brings  home  to  them. 

Such  swinish  trampling  on  the  pearls  of 
proffered  affection,  such  shutting  of  the 
heart  against  the  best  love  that  human 
hearts  can  bring,  such  perversion  of  offered 
forgiveness  into  a  renewed  license  to  sin, 
such  contempt  for  the  holiest  gift  of  God 
through  human  agency,  is  the  unforgivable 
sin.  It  is  unforgivable,  not  because  God, 
or  Christ,  or  the  men  who  have  caught  the 
Christlike  spirit,  do  not  stand  ready  to  for- 
72 


THE  UNFORGIVABLE  SIN 

give;  but  rather  because  the  hardened  heart 
refuses  to  let  the  offered  forgiveness  enter, 
and  shuts  its  door  upon  the  love  that  knocks 
and  waits  without. 

Whether  such  an  attitude  can  be  perma- 
nently maintained;  whether  a  soul  can  for- 
ever go  on  hardening,  and  feeding  on  hate ; 
or  whether  at  last  even  a  Guido  must  cry 
out  to  his  Pompilia  in  entreaty  (though 
even  then  it  is  a  question  whether  the 
scared  selfishness  that  merely  wants  to  es- 
cape outward  penalty  has  any  capacity  to 
appreciate  and  admit  the  love  it  blindly 
reaches  out  for  in  its  cowardly  fright),  is  a 
problem  it  is  not  necessary  here  to  raise. 
The  tragic  fact  is,  that  sometimes  unprin- 
cipled men  and  heartless  women  do  take 
that  attitude,  and  so  make  forgiveness, 
and  the  regeneration  forgiveness  works, 
impossible.  From  such  persons,  while  we 
must  ever  be  as  ready  to  forgive  and  love 
as  God  is  to  send  his  sun  and  rain  upon 

73 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

them,  we  must  withhold  our  pearls  so  long 
as  they  would  be  trampled  on;  we  must 
let  social  condemnation,  and  civil  law, 
and  nature's  inexorable  retributions,  do 
their  purging,  and  it  may  be  their  destroy- 
ingj  work. 


VI 

PUNISHMENT   AS    A   FAVOR 

What  has  been  said  thus  far  doubtless 
has  seemed  to  many  readers  as  weak,  in- 
dulgent, soft-hearted,  lacking  in  virility  and 
force.  So  it  would  be  if  it  were  the  whole 
story;  but  it  is  only  half  the  truth.  It  is 
to  be  sure  the  central  half.  "  The  heart  of 
the  Eternal  is  most  wonderfully  kind.'^ 
Tenderness  and  forgiveness  are  initial  and 
fundamental;  not  afterthoughts,  or  the  re- 
sult of  special  arrangements. 

Furthermore,  hitherto  we  have  assumed 
in  all  cases  except  that  of  the  unforgivable 
sin,  that  when  the  meanness  of  his  sin  is 
brought  home  to  the  offender  by  one  who 
loves  him  in  spite  of  it,  he  is  sorry  and  re- 
pents. In  all  such  cases  forgiveness  is  full, 
free,  and  instantaneous.  God  would  not  be 
75 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

God,  but  a  devil;  the  Christian  man  would 
not  be  aChristian,but  worse  than  a  heathen, 
were  he  to  withhold  forgiveness  for  an  in- 
stant from  an  offender  who  is  truly  penitent. 

Still  there  remain  the  great  majority  of 
cases,  where  forgiving  love  fails  to  reach 
the  offender,  and  make  itself  felt,  and  trans- 
form him.  In  the  complexity  of  life,  in  the 
chasms  between  different  classes,  in  the  re- 
moteness of  the  offense  from  the  one  who 
suffers  for  it,  and  in  the  scarcity  of  persons 
who  are  able  to  manifest  forgiving  love  in 
its  beauty  and  transforming  power,  there 
are  bound  to  be  a  great  many  offenders 
who  do  not  keenly  feel  the  shame  of  their 
offense,  and  consequently  are  not  disposed 
to  stop  it,  and  turn  from  it.  What  is  the 
will  of  God,  what  is  the  right  attitude  of 
the  Christian  man,  toward  these  offenders  ? 

It  is  punishment;  and  that  as  a  double 
favor:  a  protection  to  society,  and  an  inci- 
pient remedy  for  the  offender. 

76 


PUNISHMENT  AS  A  FAVOR 

If  the  title  of  this  chapter  strikes  us  as 
strange  and  paradoxical,  it  is  a  sad  com- 
mentary on  the  crudeness  and  brutality  of 
our  current  Christianity.  For  the  truth  con- 
tained in  it  is  centuries  older  than  Chris- 
tianity. The  mystic  poet  of  Persia  asked  of 
God  the  irrefutable  question:  "If  because 
I  do  evil,  Thou  punishest  me  by  evil,  what 
is  the  difference  between  Thee  and  me  ? '' 
It  was  a  commonplace  with  Plato,  and 
comes  out  in  the  "Apology,"  in  the  "Re- 
public,''and  as  the  inevitable  conclusion  of 
a  protracted  argument  in  the  "Gorgias." 
Socrates's  last  request  of  his  judges  was  that 
they  would  do  him  the  favor  to  punish  his 
sons  whenever  they  might  deserve  it.  "Still 
I  have  a  favor  to  ask.  When  my  sons  are 
grown  up,  I  would  ask  you,  O  my  friends, 
to  punish  them;  and  I  would  have  you 
trouble  them,  as  I  have  troubled  you,  if 
they  seem  to  care  about  riches,  or  anything, 
more  than  about  virtue;  or  if  they  pretend 

77 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

to  be  something  when  they  are  really  no- 
thing,— then  reprove  them,  as  I  have  re- 
proved you,  for  not  caring  about  that  for 
which  they  ought  to  care,  and  thinking 
that  they  are  something  when  they  are 
really  nothing.  And  if  you  do  this,  I  and 
my  sons  will  have  received  justice  at  your 
hands." 

Plato  compares  a  man  who  contrives  to 
escape  punishment  to  a  man  who  has  a 
bodily  disease  and  contrives  to  escape  the 
treatment  of  the  physician.  At  the  conclu- 
sion of  the  argument  in  the  "Gorgias,"  he 
represents  Socrates  as  saying:  "I  maintain 
that  he  who  has  done  wrong  and  has  not 
been  punished,  is  and  ought  to  be  the  most 
miserable  of  all  men ;  and  that  the  doer  of 
wrong  is  more  miserable  than  the  sufferer; 
and  he  who  escapes  punishment  more  mis- 
erable than  he  who  suffers." 

Of  course,  in  different  terms,  in  the  para- 
ble of  the  Prodigal  Son,  in  the  treatment 

78 


r 


PUNISHMENT  AS  A  FAVOR 

of  the  woman  taken  in  adultery,  in  the 
teaching  that  the  Father  sends  sun  and 
rain  on  the  good  and  on  the  evil,  and  in 
the  doctrine  of  "free  grace,"  all  this  is 
taught  most  clearly  and  convincingly  in  the 
New  Testament.  But,  unfortunately,  other 
elements,  survivals  from  the  cruder  Judaism 
that  preceded  it,  are  mingled  with  it;  and 
the  Christian  Church,  in  its  theological  con- 
structions, has  usually  manifested  a  greater 
affinity  for  the  Jewish  and  Pagan  survivals 
in  the  New  Testament,  than  for  the  dis- 
tinctively Christian  contribution.  The  re- 
sult has  been  that  Christian  theology  has 
fallen  far  below  the  teaching  of  Omar 
Khayyam  and  Plato.  Vengeance  has  held 
the  foreground  5  and  forgiveness,  or  "  par- 
don" has  been  brought  in  by  a  special 
forensic  scheme.  The  result  has  been  a 
reversion  to  practical  paganism,  tinged, 
however,  in  spite  of  its  sacrificial  and  fo- 
rensic terminologj^,  with  a  few  faint  traces 
79 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

of  the  distinctive  Christian  attitude.  Thus 
forgiveness,  instead  of  being  central,  has  be- 
come peripheral  5  and  punishment,  instead 
of  being  recognized  as  a  favor  granted  by 
God,  and  by  all  right-minded  men,  to  so- 
ciety as  a  protection,  and  to  the  offender 
as  an  aid  to  a  just  appreciation  of  his  sin, 
has  been  regarded  as  an  evil,  inflicted  in 
malignity. 

What  is  God's  will?  What  should  the 
Christian  man  do  ?  Let  us  take  a  concrete 
case.  I  have  worked  hard  for  a  lifetime, 
and  as  a  provision  for  myself  and  my  family 
in  old  age  have  my  entire  savings  deposited 
temporarily  in  a  bank.  An  officer  in  that 
bank  borrows  that  money  illegally,  specu- 
lates with  it,  and  is  unable  to  replace  it.  I 
find  it  out  Ought  I  as  a  Christian  man  to 
cover  up  his  wrong-doing,  give  him  a  check 
for  the  amount,  receiving  nothing  in  return 
but  his  promise  to  pay  what  little  he  can 
from  time  to  time  as  his  salary  will  allow? 
80 


PUNISHMENT  AS  A  FAVOR 

Would  that  be  Christian  love?  Certainly 
notj  if  he  had  not  repented.  Certainly  not, 
if  he  is  simply  sorry  for  the  plight  he  is  in, 
and  desirous  of  escaping  disgrace  and  im- 
prisonment. In  that  case,  it  will  be  the  truer 
kindness  to  him  to  expose  him,  and  let  him 
take  his  punishment; — disgrace  to  himself 
and  humiliation  to  his  family  and  friends. 
That  experience  of  punishment  will  reveal 
to  him  the  intrinsic  hatefulness  of  his  deed, 
as  mere  smoothing  it  over  never  would. 
At  the  same  time  it  protects  others  from 
being  sacrificed,  as  I  have  been,  to  his  gam- 
bling and  stealing  propensities.  Punish- 
ment, hard  as  it  is,  is  the  real  kindness  to 
him,  and  to  society. 

Every  judge  of  a  court,  every  head  of  a 
school  or  college,  every  parent,  every  per- 
son who  lives  in  close  and  vital  contact  with 
persons  who  do  wrong,  knows  that  the 
severest  punishment  maybe  inflicted,  not 
only  without  the  slightest  trace  of  vindic- 
8i 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

tiveness  or  malice,  but  with  sorrow  and  com- 
passion for  the  pain  of  the  person  punished. 
Unless  we  bear  in  our  own  hearts  the  pen- 
alty of  another's  wrong-doing  we  cannot, 
as  Christians,  inflict  the  penalty  on  him. 

In  the  case  cited  above,  what  ought  we 
to  do  if  thoroughly  convinced  that  the 
speculating  bank  officer  is  not  merely  sorry 
for  the  plight  he  is  in,  and  the  punishment 
it  promises  to  bring  upon  him,  but  is  sin- 
cerely sorry  for  the  harm  he  has  done  me, 
so  profoundly  penitent  that  nothing  would 
ever  induce  him  to  be  guilty  of  such  a 
wrong  deed  again,  and  earnestly  desirous 
of  doing  everything  in  his  power  to  make 
reparation?  Ought  I  then  to  expose  him, 
and  bring  him  to  punishment  and  his  fam- 
ily to  shame  and  sorrow?  No.  In  that 
case  the  Christian  will  forgive,  and  bear  in 
silence  the  painful  consequences  of  the  evil 
deed.  Harm  has  been  done,  irreparable 
harm,  but  no  good  would  come  of  expos- 
82 


PUNISHMENT  AS  A  FAVOR 

ing  and  punishing  a  man  who  already  is 
suffering  sorrow  and  remorse  for  the 
wrong  that  he  has  done,  and  is  doing  all 
in  his  power,  however  little  that  may  be, 
to  make  amends. 

If  this  seems  too  good  to  be  true,  too 
hard  for  human  nature,  the  only  answer  is 
that  all  of  us  who  try  to  carry  the  Christian 
spirit  into  life,  all  of  us  who  live  at  points 
where  the  real  forces  of  society  come  into 
collision,  know  many  persons  who  invari- 
ably forgive;  who  do  it  in  this  vital,  costly, 
sacrificial  way;  in  the  way  Christ  did  it, 
and  taught  his  followers  to  do  it.  Out  of 
many  such  persons  whom  I  have  known, 
I  will  cite  one,  who  illustrates  both  the 
favor  of  punishment  to  the  unrepenting, 
and  forgiveness  to  the  truly  penitent. 

He  was  a  Roman  Catholic  saint,  to  whom 
in  student  days  I  used  to  go  quite  regu- 
larly, as  often  as  I  felt  the  need  of  a  spir- 
itual bath.  He  lived  the  life  of  a  mediaeval 

83 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

mystic,  though  he  had  been  in  early  life 
the  leading  physician  of  the  orthodox  town 
of  Andover,  Massachusetts.  I  remember 
well  his  reproof  when  one  Monday  even- 
ing, I  came  to  him,  thoroughly  exhausted 
after  a  foolishly  ambitious  effort  to  be  elo- 
quent as  a  preacher  the  day  before.  "  Do 
you  know  what  you  are  like  ?  "  he  said  as 
soon  as  I  entered.  "You  are  like  a  pipe 
closed  toward  the  reservoir  and  open 
toward  the  outlet.''  Once,  when  an  able- 
bodied  beggar  came  to  his  door  asking  for 
bread,  he  gave  him  such  a  merciless  scold- 
ing as  I  never  heard  before  or  since  ;  and, 
as  the  beggar  turned  away  in  shame  and 
confusion,  the  old  saint  remarked  to  me  in 
the  quietest,  gentlest  tones,  "  That  was  the 
kindest  thing  I  could  say  to  the  poor  fel- 
low. I  hope  it  will  do  him  the  good  I 
meant." 

One  night  his  son,  a  dissipated  young 
man,  was  brought  home  dead,  having  been 

84 


PUNISHMENT  AS  A  FAVOR 

taken  from  the  railroad  track  where  ap- 
parently he  had  been  killed  by  a  locomo- 
tive. The  father,  in  examining  the  body, 
noticed  marks  of  hands  upon  the  throat,  and 
concluded  that  he  had  been  strangled  in  a 
fight,  and  that  afterwards  his  body  had  been 
placed  on  the  track  to  conceal  the  crime 
under  the  appearance  of  accident.  He 
said  nothing;  but,  when  he  met  the  guilty 
man,  looked  at  him,  and  through  him.  A 
few  days  later  the  murderer  came  to  his 
house  to  confess.  The  father  of  the  mur- 
dered young  man  said,  "  You  need  not  con- 
fess. I  know."  The  murderer  then  asked 
him,  "What  are  you  going  to  do  about 
it  ? "  The  father  replied,  "  I  shall  do  no- 
thing. I  have  simply  one  request  to  make 
of  you.  Promise  that  you  will  repeat  from 
your  heart  the  Lord's  Prayer  every  day  of 
your  life."  The  man  promised  and  went 
away;  a  changed,  because  a  forgiven,  man. 
These  two  sides — stern  exposure  of  the 

85 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

sin  and  relentless  punishment  of  the  sinner 
so  long  as  he  still  clings  to  the  sin,  and 
forgiveness  until  seventy  times  seven  for 
the  man  who  is  truly  penitent  and  genu- 
inely responsive  —  these  two  sides  of  the 
divine  and  Christian  attitude  toward  sin 
are  inseparable.  Forgiveness  that  is  too 
blind  to  loathe  the  sin,  or  too  cowardly  to 
condemn  it,  or  too  weak  to  punish  it,  is 
mere  milk  -  and  -  water  sentimentality,  a 
wretched  counterfeit  of  Christianity.  On 
the  other  hand,  punishment  that  is  not  a 
sincere  sorrow  to  him  who  inflicts  it; 
punishment  which  is  not  inflicted  as  a  re- 
gretful second  best  because  the  offender 
would  misinterpret  the  forgiveness  which 
we  yearn  to  offer,  but  in  his  unrepentant 
state  cannot  rightly  grant;  punishment  that 
is  not  directed  toward  society's  and  the 
offender's  good,  is  brutal,  cruel,  heathen- 
ish; unworthy  of  any  man  who  calls  him- 
self a  Christian. 

86 


PUNISHMENT  AS  A  FAVOR 

Punishment  sorrowfully  but  sternly  in- 
flicted, and  forgiveness  sacrificially  but 
lovingly  bestowed,  are  different  expres- 
sions of  the  sarne  love  to  the  offender ;  and 
whether  this  love  shall  express  itself  in 
one  way  or  the  other,  depends  on  whether 
the  offender  is  still  clinging  to  his  offense, 
and  needs  to  be  shocked  and  shaken  out 
of  it,  or  whether  he  has  already  seen  the 
evil  of  it,  is  sincerely  ashamed  of  it,  and 
sorry  for  it. 

In  practical  life  this  is  often  very  hard  to 
determine.  It  is  the  most  diflScult  decision 
the  parent,  the  teacher,  the  executive  offi- 
cer ever  has  to  make.  Tears,  entreaties, 
and  protestations  of  reform  are  no  relia- 
ble indication.  They  are  quite  as  likely  to 
express  selfish  sorrow  over  exposure  and 
impending  pain,  as  unselfish  sorrow  for 
sin  and  the  harm  to  others  it  has  wrought. 
With  the  best  intentions  we  shall  some- 
times make  mistakes.    Nothing  less  than 

87 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

omniscient  insight  into  the  offender's  heart 
could  tell  us  infallibly  when  to  punish  and 
when  to  forgive.  Anger  is  always  blind- 
ing ;  and  unless  we  can  punish  without 
wrath,  we  should  never  punish  at  all.  On 
the  other  hand,  love  is  wonderfully  illumi- 
nating. Sympathy  is  interpretative.  If  we 
are  actuated  sincerely  and  solely  by  regard 
for  the  good  of  the  offender  and  of  society, 
we  shall  not  often  go  far  astray,  nor  ever 
beyond  the  power  to  confess  and  correct 
whatever  mistakes  we  make. 

The  difference  between  the  new  and  the 
old  theology,  in  other  words  the  difference 
between  Christianity  as  Jesus  exemplified 
and  taught  it,  and  heathenism  as  theologi- 
ans have  imported  it  into  Christianity  and 
given  it  an  elaborate  Christian  nomencla- 
ture, is  simply  the  difference  between  pre- 
senting vengeance  as  the  fundamental  di- 
vine, and  therefore  normal  human  impulse, 
with  pardon  as  a  secondary  consideration 
88 


PUNISHMENT  AS  A  FAVOR 

introduced  by  special  arrangement;  and 
presenting  forgiveness  as  the  fundamental 
divine,  and  therefore  normal  human  atti- 
tude, with  punishment  a  sorry  substitute, 
to  be  regretfully  applied  whenever  the 
offender's  condition  renders  forgiveness 
inapplicable. 

Both  types  of  theology,  both  Christianity 
and  heathenism,  hate  sin;  but  in  heathen- 
ism, and  in  the  old  theology  which  retains 
such  large  elements  of  heathenism,  the 
hatred  of  sin  is  primary  and  the  love  of  the 
sinner  is  secondary.  In  Christianity,  and  in 
the  new  theology  as  its  more  adequate 
representative,  the  love  of  man  as  man, 
whether  saint  or  sinner,  is  primary,  and 
the  punishment  of  the  sinner  is  secondary; 
a  derivative  from  society's  need  of  pro- 
tection, and  the  hardness  of  the  offender's 
heart. 

Both  views  are  earnest  and  honest  efforts 
to  drive  sin  out  of  the  world,  and  bring  in 

89 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

the  kingdom  of  heaven.  It  may  be  that  the 
alloy  of  heathenism  has  hardened  Christian- 
ity at  times  into  a  more  effective  weapon 
for  dealing  with  rough  men  in  crude  con- 
ditions. There  may  be  classes  and  races 
of  men  where  this  alloy  has  still  important 
work  to  do.  It  certainly  is  a  far  better 
agency  than  a  pseudo-Christianity  which 
has  grasped  only  the  half-truth  of  forgive- 
ness, without  its  complementary  half-truth 
that  punishment  must  be  severe  and  un- 
flinching so  long  as  the  offender  remains 
impenitent. 

Still,  "Love  is  the  strong  thing,"  and 
with  its  two-edged  sword  of  eternal  pun- 
ishment for  sin  as  long  as  the  sinner  clings 
to  it,  and  instantaneous  and  infinite  forgive- 
ness, until  seventy  times  seven,  for  whom- 
soever penitence  has  separated  from  his 
sin,  love  can  be  trusted  in  its  purity  and 
power  to  work  even  better  and  more  dur- 
ably than  any  of  its  traditional  alloys. 


VII 

THE    AGENT   OF    FORGIVENESS 

The  preceding  study  of  typical  forms  of 
both  external  and  internal  sin  has  made 
increasingly  clear  the  common  characteris- 
tic of  forgiveness,  whatever  maybe  the  spe- 
cific sin  it  meets.  Forgiveness  is  kindness 
toward  a  person  who  has  been  doing  some- 
thing which  we  abhor.  It  is  personal  good- 
will shining  through  intense  disapproval. 
It  is  close  and  friendly  contact  with  a  per- 
son whose  act  and  attitude  we  shrink  from 
and  antagonize.  It  is  not  natural,  and  there- 
fore rare.  When  it  occurs  it  is  supernatural 
and  indicates  the  presence  in  the  heart  of 
him  who  forgives  of  something  superhu- 
man, divine.  That  something,  of  course, 
is  love :  love  in  its  most  costly,  sacrificial 
form. 

91 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

Who  is  the  agent  of  forgiveness  ?  In  the 
deepest  sense,  of  course,  God,  and  God 
alone,  can  forgive  sins.  That,  however,  is 
only  another  way  of  saying  what  was  said 
above,  that  forgiveness  is  an  act  of  super- 
natural, divine  love.  For  God  is  love;  and 
whatever  can  be  done  only  in  love,  is  done 
in  God  and  through  God. 

In  another  sense,  equally  profound, 
Christ  is  the  one  through  whom  all  sins 
are  forgiven.  For  Christ  is  the  historic 
representative,  accepted  as  such  by  an 
ever  increasing  proportion  of  the  race,  of 
that  self-sacrificing,  outgoing  love  which 
holds  dear  and  sacred  every  human  soul, 
however  depraved.  Since  Christ  means 
that,  and  without  that  forgiveness  is  im- 
possible, we  rightly  regard  him  as  the 
Forgiver  and  Saviour  of  all  who  have 
sinned.  There  is  no  other  door  into  the 
sheepfold.  Other  foundation  can  no  man 
lay  than  that  is  laid,  which  is  Jesus  Christ. 
92 


THE  AGENT  OF  FORGIVENESS 

All  this,  however,  may  be  accepted  either 
in  a  dry,  dead,  traditional  sense,  or  in  a 
fresh,  vital,  world-conquering  sense.  Of  late 
the  world,  and  the  church  with  it  for  the 
most  part,  has  accepted  it  in  the  dry,  dead, 
unfruitful  sense.  The  church  that  takes  it 
in  this  sense  is  doomed.  The  preachers 
that  preach  it  are  offering  their  dimin- 
ishing congregations  a  gospel  of  mere 
words. 

If  we  are  to  save  the  world,  we  must 
not  merely  report  God's  forgiveness,  not 
merely  preach  Christ's  sacrificial  love;  we 
must  act  it  out,  we  must  be  the  agents 
of  it.  Apart  from  its  human  manifestation 
in  the  Son,  the  Father's  love  would  never 
have  become  a  potent  force  in  the  world. 
Apart  from  the  reproduction  of  Christ's 
forgiveness  in  the  life  and  attitude  of  his 
followers,  the  world  to-day  will  get  no 
more  of  Christ's  forgiveness  than  if  he  had 
never  lived.  Some  one,  who  has  the  love 

93 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

of  Christ  for  men  in  his  hearty  must  come 
close  to  the  individual  sinner,  touch  him 
at  the  sensitive  point  of  his  particular  sin 
with  mingled  kindness  for  him  and  con- 
demnation of  the  sin,  and  win  him  to  a  life 
in  which  he  shall  share  with  the  one  who 
forgives  him,  and  with  Christ  and  the 
Father,  the  condemnation  which  love 
passes  on  his  repented  sin.  Preaching  of 
Christ,  when  backed  by  a  congregation 
who  are  practicing  his  forgiveness,  preach- 
ing of  Christ  to  sinners  who  know  in  their 
own  experience  what  it  is  to  receive  gen- 
uine human  forgiveness  from  another,  or 
better  still,  who  know  what  it  is  to  give  it 
to  another,  is  indeed  powerful  to  save. 
But  what  saves  is  not  the  mere  report,  nor 
yet  the  far-off  historic  fact  reported,  but 
the  reported  fact  interpreted  by  some  hu- 
man friend  in  whom  it  lives  and  loves 
anew.  Ecclesiasticism  is  like  an  army  of 
generals,  who  plan  campaigns  and  give 
94 


THE  AGENT  OF  FORGIVENESS 

orders  which  nobody  executes  and  obeys. 
Like  the  soldiers  in  battle  it  is  the  laymen, 
or  the  clergy  as  pastors  doing  essentially 
la3^men's  hand-to-hand  personal  work,  who 
bring  forgiveness  home  to  the  heart  of 
the  sinner,  and  so  save  souls. 

In  saying  this,  it  is  not  meant  to  deny 
that  the  preacher,  and  even  the  priest,  has 
an  important  function  to  perform.  The  fun- 
damental work,  the  actual  transmission  of 
forgiveness  from  God  through  one  soul  to 
another,  is  a  personal,  hand-to-hand,  heart- 
to-heart  relation,  of  which  no  rites,  cere- 
monies, preachments,  or  proclamations  can 
ever  take  the  place. 

Preacher  and  priest  are  secondary  and 
subordinate :  ministers  and  servants,  as  Jesus 
ordained  them  to  be.  Laymen,  and  minis- 
ters acting  as  laymen,  that  is  as  individual 
men  in  personal  relations  with  other  individ- 
ual men,  do  the  real  work.  Yet  in  keeping 
laymen    up    to   their    Christian   privilege, 

95 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

in  holding  before  them  Christ  as  the  great 
historic  leader,  and  God  as  the  infinite  love, 
the  preacher  performs  a  valuable  work. 
The  more  its  subordinate  and  serviceable 
character  is  recognized,  the  more  important 
does  it  become. 

The  actual  agents  of  God's  forgiveness 
are  individual  Christian  men  and  women. 
The  real  church  is  the  company  of  those 
who  have  God's  forgiving  love  in  their 
hearts,  and  bestow  it  on  their  fellow  men. 
Wherever  one  such  soul  forgives  and  loves 
another,  however  unworthy  that  other  be, 
there  the  kingdom  of  God  comes  and 
spreads.  Whoever  forgives  others  has  the 
indispensable  experience  within  him  by 
which  to  interpret  the  reported  and  trans- 
mitted forgiveness  of  God  in  Jesus  Christ. 
To  those  who  lack  that  experience  in  them- 
selves, or  lack  some  human  friend  to  act  as 
its  interpreter  to  them,  forgiveness,  how- 
ever eloquently  reported  in  book  or  ser- 

96 


THE  AGENT  OF  FORGIVENESS 

mon,  remains  a  sealed  message,  an  untrans- 
lated and  untranslatable  cipher. 

If  this  sounds  strange  and  startling  to  our 
modern  ears,  it  is  simply  an  indication  that, 
when  stated  in  other  than  traditional  terms, 
the  doctrine  of  the  Holy  Spirit  is  something 
we  have  never  so  much  as  heard  of,  and  in 
which  we  have  no  vital  faith.  For  that  doc- 
trine is  simply  the  truth  set  forth  above, 
that  God  does  his  forgiving,  saving,  regen- 
erating work  through  the  touch  of  a  heart 
that  has  his  love  on  the  life  of  another  who 
needs  it. 


VIII 

THE    PO.WER    TO    BIND    AND    LOOSE 

The  best  test  of  the  position  taken  in 
this  book  is  its  interpretation  of  the  words 
in  which  Jesus,  discussing  with  his  disciples 
this  subject  of  Sin  and  its  Forgiveness, 
conferred  the  power  to  bind  and  loose. 
"  Verily  I  say  unto  you,  What  things  soever 
ye  shall  bind  on  earth  shall  be  bound  in 
heaven:  and  what  things  soever  ye  shall 
loose  on  earth  shall  be  loosed  in  heaven." 

There  are  three  possible  interpretations 
of  these  words.  First,  the  interpretation  of 
traditional  ecclesiasticism.  According  to 
this  view,  heaven  and  earth  are  distinct 
places,  to  be  occupied  by  the  individual  soul 
only  at  separate  times.  God  is  in  heaven  in 
a  sense  in  which  He  is  not  on  the  earth. 
There  He  has  certain  terms,  which  to  our 

98 


THE  POWER  TO  BIND  AND  LOOSE 

limited  understanding  must  appear  as  more 
or  less  arbitrary,  on  which  in  his  discretion 
He  forgives  those  whom  He  sees  fit  to  for- 
give. 

At  a  certain  time  God  sent  his  Son  into 
the  world,  announcing  his  advent  by  signs 
and  wonders  intended  to  accredit  the  mes- 
senger and  attest  the  message.  His  Son  was 
authorized  to  forgive  sinners  who  conform 
to  the  terms  revealed. 

Before  leaving  the  world,  Jesus  trans- 
mitted this  miraculously  attested  power  to 
his  Apostles,  and  they  in  turn  have  trans- 
mitted it  to  their  successors,  who  have  the 
power  to  pronounce  a  forgiveness  here 
which  assures  absolution  hereafter,  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  to  pronounce  an  anathema 
here  which  will  exclude  from  blessedness 
hereafter. 

It  is  needless  to  criticise  this  view. 
The  modern  world,  at  least  the  intelligent 
and  thoughtful  portion,  has  outgrown  it, 
99 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

and  the  conceptions  on  which  it  rests. 
Other  things  being  equal,  the  thoughtful 
modern  man  would  not  give  the  snap  of  his 
fingers  for  the  difference  between  ecclesi- 
astical forgiveness  of  this  traditional  sort 
and  ecclesiastical  condemnation.  We  pay  no 
more  attention  to  it  than  the  practical  farmer 
would  pay  to  agricultural  suggestions  pur- 
porting to  be  based  on  the  results  of  ex- 
periments conducted  at  some  experiment 
station  on  the  planet  Mars.  For  the  hard 
and  fast  distinctions  between  earth  and 
heaven,  present  and  future,  natural  and  su- 
pernatural, priest  and  layman,  God  and 
man,  have  completely  broken  down. 

The  second  view,  widely  though  not 
consciously  held  by  most  Protestant  sects, 
is  that  Jesus  did  not  mean  much  of  anything 
in  particular  by  this  power  to  bind  and 
loose.  To  the  sinner  it  practically  says, 
"God  is  gracious;  go  to  Him  alone  in 
prayer;  confess  your  sins  and  ask  his  for- 

lOO 


THE  POWER  TO  BIND  AND  LOOSE 

giveness,  and  He  will  forgive  you."  If  you 
ask  for  assurance,  you  will  be  referred  to 
the  Bible,  and  the  written  promises  con- 
tained in  specific  verses,  as  final  and  suffi- 
cient authority.  All  human  mediation  be- 
tween the  sinner  on  the  one  hand  and  God 
and  his  promises  in  the  Bible  on  the  other 
is  dispensed  with,  save  in  so  far  as  the 
preacher,  supported  by  the  congregation, 
proclaims  the  grace  of  God,  and  announces 
his  promised  forgiveness. 

This  view,  by  reducing  the  function  of 
the  church  to  that  of  a  mere  preaching 
station,  and  sending  the  repentant  sinner 
straight  to  God,  and  Christ,  and  the  Bible, 
for  forgiveness,  relieves  the  Christian  man 
and  the  Christian  community  of  that  close 
personal  contact,  illuminated  by  the  insight 
of  love,  which  makes  forgiveness  a  personal, 
social  relationship.  The  power  to  bind  and 
loose,  on  this  view,  is  an  utterly  unintel- 
ligible mystery.  There  is  no  place  what- 
loi 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

ever  for  it.  No  practical  meaning  can  be 
attached  to  it.  The  preacher  is  a  mere  re- 
porter of  a  forgiveness  which  is  offered  in 
the  Bible,  and  is  bestowed  directly  from 
God  upon  the  individual,  without  human 
and  social  expression. 

What  wonder  that,  wherever  this  view  is 
held,  the  church  is  a  declining  power,  a 
waning  influence!  A  church  that  has  been 
reduced  to  a  mere  preaching  station,  a 
repository  of  traditions,  a  performer  of  rites 
and  ceremonies,  is  not  far  from  its  inevita- 
ble extinction.  The  practical  logic  of  this 
view  is  that  because  God  forgives  sin,  and 
Christ  came  once  for  all  to  reveal  the  terms 
of  that  forgiveness,  therefore  all  that  is  left 
is  for  preachers  to  preach,  and  laymen  to 
hear,  the  forgiveness  of  God  as  it  was  re- 
vealed in  Christ.  In  so  far  as  that  logic  is 
accepted,  the  minister  is  a  mere  reporter, 
and  the  laity  mere  listeners.  Such  forgive- 
ness by  hearsay  does  not  work,  and  was 

I02 


THE  POWER  TO  BIND  AND  LOOSE 

never  intended  to  work.  A  church  that  does 
nothing  but  listen  to  ministers  who  do  no- 
thing but  talk  is  doomed  to  die  of  inanition. 
Important  sections  of  Protestantism  are 
dying  that  slow  and  painless  death  to-day. 

If  neither  ecclesiastical  pretensions  on 
the  one  hand,  nor  hearsay  traditions  on  the 
other,  carry  with  them  the  power  to  bind 
and  loose,  where  does  that  power  lie? 

Forgiveness  is  a  personal  and  social  rela- 
tion. It  is  personal  kindness  and  good-will, 
shining  through  intense  disapproval  of  the 
wrong  the  forgiven  man  has  done.  It  in- 
volves close  and  friendly  contact  with  a 
person  whose  conduct  we  shrink  from  and 
deplore.  It  is  not  natural,  and  is  therefore 
rare.  It  is  supernatural,  and  indicates  the 
presence  of  something  superhuman,  divine. 
That  something,  of  course,  is  lovej  love  in 
its  most  costly,  sacrificial  form. 

In  the  deepest  sense  God,  and  God  alone, 
forgives  sins.  That  however  is  only  another 
103 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

way  of  saying  what  was  said  above,  that 
forgiveness  is  an  act  of  supernatural,  divine 
love.  For  God  is  love;  and  what  can  be 
done  only  in  love  is  done  in  God  and  through 
God. 

In  another  sense,  equally  profound,  Christ 
is  the  one  through  whom  all  sins  are  for- 
given. For  Christ  is  the  historic  representa- 
tive, accepted  as  such  by  an  ever  increasing 
proportion  of  the  race,  of  that  self-sacrific- 
ing, outgoing  love  which  holds  sacred  every 
human  soul,  however  depraved.  Since 
Christ  stands  for  that,  and,  without  that, 
forgiveness  is  impossible,  we  rightly  regard 
Christ  as  the  Saviour  of  all  who  have  sinned. 
There  is  no  other  door  into  the  sheepfold. 
Other  foundation  can  no  man  lay  than  that 
is  laid,  which  is  Jesus  Christ. 

All  this,  however,  as  we  have  seen,  may 

be  taken   in  either  of  two  ways  that  are 

about  equally  dead.  Those  who  believe  in 

the  mechanical,  miraculous  commission  of 

104 


THE  POWER  TO  BIND  AND  LOOSE 

the  church  to  bind  and  loose,  and  those 
who  think  there  is  practically  nothing  for 
the  church  to  do  but  listen  to  a  report  of 
what  was  done  long  ago,  and  is  laid  up  in 
heaven,  find  a  meaning  in  these  texts.  In 
addition  to  these  two  views,  is  there  a  third 
view,  which  takes  these  truths  in  a  fresh, 
vital,  world-conquering  sense,  and  carries 
with  it  the  power  to  bind  and  loose  so 
really  and  truly  that  what  the  Christian 
man  and  the  Christian  community  forgive 
here  and  now  is  forgiven  universally  and 
forever,  and  what  they  refuse  to  forgive 
stands  unforgiven  always  and  everywhere  ? 
Yes,  there  is.  According  to  this  view, 
the  view  which  this  book  has  sought  to 
set  forth,  while  God  eternally  forgives,  and 
Cl\rist  revealed  the  divine  forgiveness  once 
for  all,  yet  it  remains  for  Christian  men 
and  women  to  embody  and  express,  indi- 
vidually, and  as  a  community,  this  divine- 
human  forgiveness  toward  every  person 
105 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

who  needs  it,  and  is  fitted  to  receive  it. 
Forgiveness  is  a  personal  relation,  and  re- 
quires for  its  full  and  adequate  expression 
two  parties,  both  human,  sharing  together 
the  condemnation  of  whatever  has  been 
wrong  in  either;  bearing  toward  each  other 
mutual  respect,  and  mutual  affection.  Until 
God's  forgiveness  is  thus  incarnated,  until 
Christ's  forgiveness  is  thus  reproduced,  in 
the  specific  situation  where  it  is  needed, 
toward  the  particular  individual  who  has 
done  the  wrong,  it  remains  something  up 
in  the  clouds,  back  in  ancient  history.  It 
is  not  a  vital,  flesh-and-blood  reality,  doing 
its  redeeming,  transforming  work  in  the 
midst  of  breathing,  erring,  repenting  men 
and  women,  in  the  homes,  and  factories, 
and  farms,  and  stores,  and  offices  of  the 
actual  modern  world. 

If  we  are  to  help  save  the  world,  we 
must  not  merely  delegate  God's  forgive- 
ness to  an  institution  or  an  order;  we  must 
1 06 


THE  POWER  TO  BIND  AND  LOOSE 

not  merely  report  it  as  a  fact  in  eternity, 
or  as  an  event  in  past  time.  We  must  not 
merely  symbolize  Christ's  sacrificial  love 
upon  the  altar,  or  announce  it  from  the  pul- 
pit: we  must  act  it  out;  we  must  be  the 
agents  of  it.  For  though  it  is  true  that  one 
may  learn  of  Christ's  forgiveness  from 
sermon  or  Bible,  even  then  it  is  expe- 
rience of  forgiveness  by  a  human  mother, 
teacher,  or  friend,  which  gives  the  hearer 
or  reader  the  power  to  interpret  in  real 
terms  the  re-ported  or  recorded  forgiveness 
of  Christ. 

Real  forgiveness,  genuine  salvation,  re- 
quires, as  has  been  said,  that  some  one  who 
has  the  love  of  Christ  for  men  in  his  heart 
shall  come  close  to  the  individual  who 
has  done  wrong,  touch  him  at  the  sensitive 
point  of  his  particular  wrong-doing  with 
mingled  kindness  for  him  and  condemna- 
tion for  his  sin,  and  win  him  to  share  with 
the  one  who  loves  him,  and  with  God,  their 
107 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

common  condemnation  of  the  wrong  which 
he  has  done. 

Laymen,  and  pastors  doing  laymen's 
personal  work  with  individuals,  are  the 
real  agents  of  forgiveness.  They  actually 
take  the  forgiveness  of  God  in  Christ,  and 
bestow  it  upon  the  man  whom,  in  spite  of 
his  shortcomings,  they  still  welcome  as  a 
brother  and  a  friend.  The  community  of 
such  laymen,  sharing  together  the  loving 
and  forgiving  spirit  of  Christ,  and  mani- 
festing it  toward  one  another  and  toward 
all,  is  the  church.  Whoever  makes  such 
loving  forgiveness  the  principle  and  spirit 
of  his  life,  thereby  enters  and  abides  in  the 
kingdom  of  God,  and  the  body  of  Christ. 
Wherever  one  such  soul  forgives  and 
loves  another  who  has  done  wrong,  there 
the  kingdom  of  God  comes,  there  the 
church  of  Christ  extends  and  spreads.  All 
who  have  that  experience,  whether  laymen 
or  clergymen,  have  the  experience  where- 
io8 


THE  POWER  TO  BIND  AND  LOOSE 

with  to  assure  themselves  that  the  reported 
forgiveness  of  God  in  Jesus  Christ  includes 
and  applies  to  them;  and  to  all  whom,  with 
the  insight  of  love,  they  lovingly  forgive. 
Loosed  from  condemnation  on  earth,  they, 
and  all  whom  they  forgive,  are  loosed  in 
heaven. 

Finally,  those  who  deliberately  refuse  a 
proffered  forgiveness,  generously  brought, 
and  adequately  interpreted  in  loving  hu- 
man terms,  those,  in  other  words,  who  are 
guilty  of  the  one  unforgivable  sin,  by  their 
own  act  bind  themselves  in  a  bondage  to 
sin,  from  which  there  is  no  escape.  Conse- 
quently, when  any  Christian,  clergyman  or 
layman,  finds  a  person  in  that  condition, 
and  therefore  finds  it  impossible  to  forgive 
him  for  a  sin  to  which  he  clings,  and  for 
which  he  refuses  to  be  forgiven,  then  and 
there  that  Christian  man  leaves  him  bound 
in  a  bondage  which  God  does  not  unbind. 

In  failing  to  forgive  a  man  in  such  an 
109 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

attitude,  the  Christian  man  is  simply  doing 
what  God  does.  In  other  words,  forgiving 
love  in  God  and  forgiving  love  in  man  are 
essentially  the  same;  and  what  one  cannot 
consistently  and  properly  do,  the  other  can- 
not consistently  and  properly  do.  Such  is 
the  inevitable  conclusion  of  the  doctrine 
that  God  was  incarnate  in  Christ,  and  that 
Christ's  attitude  toward  sin  and  the  sinner 
is  reincarnated  in  the  person  of  every 
Christian  man,  and  in  the  community  of 
Christian  men.  Such,  in  other  words,  is  the 
inevitable  conclusion  of  the  doctrine  that 
love  in  God  is  of  the  same  nature  as  love 
in  man,  and  that  God  does  his  saving  and 
regenerating  work  through  the  touch  of 
human  hearts  that  have  his  love  on  other 
human  hearts  that  need  it. 

In  the  days  when  these  doctrines  were 

clearly  grasped  and  vitally  believed,  they 

were  called  the  Divinity  of  Christ,  and  the 

Holy  Spirit:  and  taken  together  in  their 

no 


THE  POWER  TO  BIND  AND  LOOSE 

implications  and  relations  constituted  the 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity.  If  these  formula- 
tions are  held  to-day  in  very  loose  and 
precarious  fashion,  it  is  simply  because  we 
have  lost  our  hold  on  those  spiritual  expe- 
riences they  were  formulated  to  express. 

If,  then,  the  power  to  bind  and  loose  re- 
sides in  the  Christian  man  and  the  Chris- 
tian community,  irrespective  of  any  special 
order  or  office;  if  it  is  a  layman's  preroga- 
tive and  a  layman's  task,  what,  then,  is  the 
prerogative  and  task  of  the  clergy?  How 
does  a  clergyman  differ  from  a  layman? 

Simply  in  this:  that  he  is  set  apart  to 
lead  his  fellow  Christians  in  this  common 
work,  much  as  a  standard-bearer  is  de- 
tailed to  carry  the  colors  before  the  regi- 
ment. As  a  standard-bearer,  the  man  who 
carries  the  colors  does  no  fighting,  though 
he  leads  the  way  and  encourages  and  in- 
spires others  to  see  and  do  their  duty.  Pre- 
cisely so,  the  minister  is  detailed  to  keep 
III 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

clearly  before  his  eyes  and  before  the  e3^es 
of  his  Christian  comrades,  to  keep  warm 
within  his  own  heart,  and  in  the  hearts  of 
his  Christian  comrades,  the  spirit  of  forgiv- 
ing, sacrificing  love;  to  discover  opportu- 
nity and  need  for  its  practical  expression; 
to  mass  the  forces  of  righteousness  at  the 
points  where  sin  attacks  society;  and  ever 
to  seek  to  win  over  to  the  service  and  love 
of  the  right  those  who  through  ignorance, 
or  bad  example,  or  appetite,  or  passion, 
have  become  enlisted  for  the  wrong. 

As  a  pastor,  a  missionary,  a  settlement- 
worker,  a  teacher,  a  friend,  the  Christian 
minister  will  have  abundant  occasion  and 
opportunity  to  do,  like  any  layman,  the  ac- 
tual work  of  reproving,  forgiving,  and  lov- 
ing individual  men,  which  is  the  essential 
Christian  work.  Indeed,  his  relief  from  the 
necessity  of  earning  his  livelihood  in  other 
ways  gives  him  a  unique  opportunity  to  do 
these  things.  But  in  all  such  Christian  ser- 

112 


THE  POWER  TO  BIND  AND  LOOSE 

vice,  he  has  no  authority  different  from 
other  men,  or  higher  than  theirs.  He  sim- 
ply has  the  opportunity  to  gain  and  impart 
the  clearer  intellectual  grasp  of  spiritual 
truth  and  motive,  and  the  leisure  to  make 
of  them  more  frequent  and  constant  appli- 
cation. He  is  the  servant  of  those  who 
serve,  the  minister  of  those  who  minister. 
In  assigning  to  the  minister  this  secon- 
dary and  subordinate  function,  as  Jesus 
assigned  it  to  his  disciples,  when  he  girded 
himself  with  a  towel  and  washed  their  feet, 
we  are  not  degrading  but  rather  exalting 
the  ministry.  For  Jesus  himself  was  among 
men  as  one  who  served.  The  only  rank 
recognized  in  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is 
gradation  of  service;  and  in  that  grada- 
tion, the  last  to  think  of  himself  and  his 
special  prerogatives  stands  first  in  the  esti- 
mation of  his  Lord;  the  lowest  in  preten- 
sions is  highest  in  usefulness;  the  least  in 
desiring  to  have  others  look  up  to  him  is 
113 


SIN  AND  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

greatest  in  the  appreciation  with  which  the 
Master  looks  down  upon  him.  To  hold  the 
love  of  the  Father  in  his  heart,  and  the  life 
of  the  Master  before  his  eyes,  with  so 
much  learning  and  devotion  that  brothers 
by  his  side  shall  catch  from  him  the  vision 
and  the  fire,  and  share  with  him  the  com- 
mon task  of  reproving  and  condemning  the 
sins  that  dishonor  God,  hurt  men,  and  harm 
society;  and  at  the  same  time  forgiving 
and  loving  every  brother,  however  guilty, 
whom  forgiving  love  can  reach  and  touch 
and  transform  and  save ;  —  this  is  the  pre- 
cious privilege,  the  glorious  prerogative  of 
the  minister;  all  the  more  precious  and  glo- 
rious because  of  its  Christlike  character  of 
simple,  humble,  human  serviceableness. 

The  church  and  the  clergy,  therefore, 
are  simply  the  community  of  Christian 
men  and  women,  and  its  appointed  lead- 
ers, who  are  united  in  a  common  hatred 
of  all  forms  of  sin,  whether  in  themselves 
114 


THE  POWER  TO  BIND  AND  LOOSE 

or  others,  a  common  desire  to  stop  the 
wretchedness  that  sin  entails  on  its  vic- 
tims, and  a  common  effort  to  save  those 
who  are  guilty  of  it  from  their  meanness 
and  their  shame. 

The  power  to  bind  and  loose,  accord- 
ingly, inheres  in  every  Christian  man,  and 
every  group  of  Christian  men,  in  propor- 
tion to  the  intensity  of  their  love,  and  the 
insight  love  imparts.  It  is  simply  the  power 
to  discriminate  between  the  great  mass  of 
sins  which  are  forgivable  because  men 
have  fallen  into  them  in  a  passionate  pur- 
suit of  some  petty  good,  which  has  blinded 
their  eyes  and  hardened  their  hearts  so  that 
they  do  not  see  clearly  and  feel  intensely 
the  meanness  of  their  deeds  and  the  misery 
they  cause,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  one 
sin  which  is  unforgivable,  because  it  shuts 
out  the  love  that  would  forgive  and  save, 
on  the  other  hand. 

If  most  sins,  both  external  and  internal, 
"5 


'  SIN  AlVD  ITS  FORGIVENESS 

are  wrought  in  this  blind  pursuit  of  petty 
good,  and  yet  there  is  one  sin  a  man  may 
commit  with  eyes  wide  open  to  the  beauty 
of  the  forgiving  love  he  scorns  and  tram- 
ples on,  then  the  power  to  bind  and  loose, 
the  power  to  grant  a  forgiveness  and  pass 
a  condemnation  which  are  ratified  in  hea- 
ven, and  hold  always  and  everywhere,  re- 
sides not  alone  in  God,  not  alone  in  Christ, 
not  exclusively  in  the  clergy,  but  in  every 
Christian  man  who  shares  with  the  Father 
and  with  Christ  their  forgiving  love  and 
the  spiritual  insight  forgiving  love  imparts. 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U    .    S    .    A 


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